The Sky Orphans
by britinthewoods
Summary: Luka Megurine is a pop legend. Everyone wants her, no one can have her, especially when she breaks up with a man the entire world wanted her to marry. Luka thought that was the worst of her problems. When she holds a concert in Tokyo, her entire world begins to change. Especially when a teal haired girl in pig-tails escapes from a hospital and appears to her the very same night...
1. Chapter 1

Hello. I am a writer, though it has been years since I've written a fan-fiction. I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, reader. I lead a busy life with a normal job, and as I don't have time to work on the writing I'd like to, I decided to write the sort of fiction that will not rest until it has left my head. This is one such story. I hope you enjoy. Take it for what it's worth, a fleeting thought I had while listening to some music one day. Thank you for reading.

* * *

Chapter One: Just Be Friends

Pink hair grazed across a pile of turquoise satin covered pillows, dangling off the edge of the bed with the sort of elegance one associated with Rapunzel. The owner of such fine, interestingly and uniquely colored hair slumbered luxuriously, eyelashes lightly caressing against a face of creamy porcelain. Limbs akimbo, sheets tucked beneath and around her mid-section, her toes brushed the foot of the bed as she stirred. A light breath followed, full of the relief at having a good night's rest, as the rosy haired maiden slowly pushed herself up onto her elbows, brushing layered strands out of her face.

An elegant and manicured hand lazily reached across to the bedside table, seeking an object. It bumped around mindlessly, until the female, realizing she needed to look for the object before she could lay hold of it, rolled to her side to get a better view of the table. Her light blue eyes lit on the white cell phone lying on the table top.

It was in her hands within seconds, and she rolled to her back, already scrolling through the one hundred and fifty three messages that had blown up her phone through the night. She silently thanked herself for remembering to put the device on silent.

Switching to her twitter page, her face paled from a morning blush that had begun to spread from her wakening, draining of any color. What she had dreaded had come to pass. She had known better than to access social media so soon after her decision.

Ignoring the urge to drown the phone in the toilet, she instead laid it back on the spot on the bedside table and drug herself out of bed, making her quick way to the restroom. After relieving herself and brushing her teeth, she slid back into the bedroom and went for her walk-in closet. It was time to face the day, brave or not.

An hour later she was dressed (black mini skirt and draping, off the shoulder black glitter blouse, black heeled boots, short) and seated at the tiny kitchen table in the corner of the kitchen she liked to call the nook. She did everything in the nook. The nook was where she edited her song lyrics, filed her taxes, read a book or two, and made out with Teruo for the first time…

Her thoughts drifted off from that dangerous statement as she rolled her eyes, landing her gaze on a calendar hanging on the fridge. Grateful for the change of things to resent, she glowered at the image of herself, posed like an Arabian princess, gems dropping like dew from her gold chain headpiece, folds of gold and scarlet fabric cascading purposefully from specific curves on her body to appeal to the masses. The caption beneath read "Luka Megurine comes to Dubai! Get your tickets now!".

The woman, Luka Megurine, more than famous pop singer, scowled into her bowl of cereal. She was tired of the photo shoots, the endless desire of her manager and those capitalizing on her beauty and talent forcing her into an image she didn't fit. She was almost tired enough to take a break and get away…

Her thoughts of a vacationing escape were interrupted by the alarm warning bell dinging at the front of her apartment. Someone beeped in the necessary code and shut it off, footsteps echoing an arrival as the owner of said steps marched down the hard-wood floored hallway, making his or her way to the kitchen.

Luka shifted the sleeve of her shirt a little higher to cover her bra strap, fighting a losing battle with modesty. She wasn't even sure why she bothered anymore. Soon her manager would be scheduling her nudes. No one even understood why it mattered to her, not even her manager, nor, if she was being honest, herself.

The face of her manager, Todd Bulinsky, surfaced from the hallway. He didn't bother making eye contact. He went straight to the fridge and helped himself to some orange juice, next heading for the small cabinet above the stove where he knew she stashed her favorite vodka. Capturing a glass from the cupboard, he mixed up a mimosa with the grace and style of a college bartender, then presented it with much bravado to the pop diva he spent 90% of his time with.

"I figured you'd need this."

Luka raised one finely shaped brow, hesitating before reaching to accept the glass. She nursed it slowly, aware that she wanted to keep a level head for the conversation that was to come.

Todd leaned a hip against the tiny table in the nook, running his hands along the plush backing of the Victorian era sitting room chairs she insisted belonged at the nook. As long as she continued to make him billions a year, she could do whatever she wanted. But he'd come to her home that morning to negotiate, and he wasn't going to leave until he got what he wanted instead.

Silence swelled between them. The air was pregnant with it, straining in the pain of it. Luka broke it first with a tiny clearing of her throat. Todd jumped on the opportunity.

"How could you do that? I told you it would be career suicide. Do you even care about your image?" He waved his hands as he spoke, like the world's most self-important conductor. Luka always hated how he waved his hands.

Straightening in her seat before she spoke, Luka rested the mimosa on the table and reached for the spoon in her cereal bowl.

"You cannot own my whole life, Todd. It was over already, so I ended it."

"I told you not to make decisions you can't make money off of."

"Well, not everything is about money!"

The silence returned, appalled and full of righteous indignation. Even Luka was surprised at herself, eyes wide and doe-like in the wake of the raising of her own voice. Her lower lip trembled. She wasn't usually this consternating where her manager was concerned. Her mind wandered back to that vacation. Perhaps she needed it after all.

It was Todd's turn to clear his throat. He placed his hands carefully on the back of the sitting room chair, leaning in and lowering his voice to a hush.

"Kurokana Industries is at the top of Wall Street right now. He's worth billions. He made you look good. He's King Midas… he turned you to GOLD."

Todd kept using his hands. Luka had to look away. She felt like she was going to slap them out of her face.

"Teruo Kurosawa is…" She couldn't bring herself to finish that statement. The words lodged themselves in her throat. She reached for the mimosa and took a long sip.

"What's wrong with him? He's Japanese," Todd sounded like he was trying to reason with a toddler who was refusing to color inside the lines. "Doesn't that give you comfort? Doesn't he feel like home? He was voted world's sexiest man-,"

"World's second sexiest," Luka interrupted, putting emphasis on 'second' with a roll of her eyes.

Todd waved his hands again, dismissing her words. "He's successful, he's famous, and he loves you."

 _All of those things are true, except for the last part._ Luka thought to herself. She wondered if the room was getting cold, or if the goosebumps were pimpling along her arms for a very different reason. She wished her manager would leave. He never understood nor would understand her true feelings, and today was a day she wasn't sure she could pretend anymore to humor him.

He heaved a large sigh, smart enough to realize she wasn't too happy about the situation, then pulled the chair out with the intent to sit down. Luka stood up right away. She knew if he sat down he would never leave, and then she wouldn't have the peace and privacy she really wanted.

"What do you want me to do?" She asked, steeling her voice against the burn in her throat that always came before the flood of tears.

Todd froze where he was, contemplating the fact that he actually heard those words come out of her mouth, then pushed the chair back under the table.

"I want you to make up with him-,"

"Not happening." Luka uttered firmly, carrying her bowl to the sink and dropping it so that the ceramic rattled against the vibrating metal, the spoon chattering around before resting still.

"OR," Todd continued, pretending he didn't hear her obviously irritated reply. "at the very least you could write a song about it."

Luka felt a shudder make its way from the top of her scalp to the very tip-toe of her spine. She pressed her palms against the edge of the counter and straightened out her elbows, leaning far over to press the tip of her nose against the cool glass of the window. Forty floors below her, New York City bustled by with the urgency of an anthill, tiny figures swarming to fulfill their tiny, near meaningless lives.

She never wrote songs about personal experiences. The one time she did, and tried to sing it in the recording studio, with a private audience, just to put it on an album, the amount of emotion it brought out of her left her unable to sing. The tears had been numerous, her throat had swollen shut, and she'd almost died of the embarrassment. It was the one time Todd had ever let her off the hook easily, and let her go home early. She doubted he even remembered that time; it was so close to the time that he scouted her. She had only been sixteen. Now she was twenty-five. Time sure did fly.

Even though she knew she couldn't do it, even though she knew it would take everything out of her, she knew it was the only way to get her manager out of the way to have some time to mourn the ending of a wonderful relationship in peace.

"Fine. I'll write the song."

"That's my girl!" Todd exclaimed in that self-assured way of his, then made his way over to touch her, his hands massaging her shoulders. She endured it for a second only, then shrugged out of his way and quickly stepped toward her living room, waving a hand over her shoulder at him.

"Now. Get lost. I have work to do."

The only time Todd ever listened to her was when she went total diva and bossed him around like a dominatrix in a tight leather suit. It was part of her charm, she could only guess, the power she had over men. He obeyed at the tone in her voice, making ridiculous comments about how much money they were going to make as he ushered himself out of the apartment, locking the door securely behind him.

Once she was sure he was gone, Luka sank into the mint green loveseat without so much as a sigh, her light blue eyes boring empty holes into the carpet before her. She wasn't sure how to even begin to write such a song, and in a way that it wouldn't be impossibly difficult for her to record it, let alone perform it live.

As she searched her thoughts for inspiration, tears began to roll slowly, one right after another, down her cheeks. The last words Teruo spoke to her rang in her mind, endlessly again and again, making her feel cheapened and unworthy.

And finally, after torturing herself with his voice in her head, she remembered the last words she spoke to him, and inspiration struck. She rose immediately to her feet and marched to her piano, slamming upward on the lid and grabbing the nearest sheet of blank staff paper. Rolling one of the pencils on the top of the piano toward herself, she quickly scribbled the title of the piece at the top, then slid the paper into the holder, placing her fingers on the keys.

"Just be friends…"


	2. Chapter 2

Let's continue on. The song referenced in this chapter is "Tell Your World", both the original Miku and Yuyoyuppe Luka versions. Mind you, I'm going to take the beginning slow and reveal things bit by bit, it's how I write. You wouldn't reveal all your cards playing in a game, right?

* * *

Chapter Two: Pig-Tails

 _And here to talk about her new single_ Just Be Friends _is international pop-star Megurine Luka!_

Applause.

 _Thank you, you are too kind._

 _Oh, no, thank YOU. I can't believe I get to interview the world's most beautiful and successful woman. I need a fan to be sitting so close to you._

Modest laughter. _Thank you._

 _So, you were actually born in Japan, yes? How does it feel to be back in your home country, in Tokyo no less?_

 _It's nice. I haven't been back to Japan since I was on tour in 2013. It's been far too long._

 _We're happy to have you back. Especially to perform! Word is you'll be doing one of your most spectacular line-ups here in Tokyo. Is that correct?_

 _Yes, and I'm very much looking forward to it. It will be my longest and most spectacular show yet. The wardrobes alone I'm being fitted for are outrageous. I really can't wait…_

The sound of the television interview faded out. All was blackness and muffled sound. The girl shifted her arms, straining against the invisible force that was holding them back. She flexed her fingers. She couldn't even remember having fingers. What were they for?

 _…the song is about a break-up with your longtime boy-toy, Teruo Kurosawa._

 _No comment._ Polite, flirtatious laughter.

 _Are you afraid he's watching this broadcast?_

 _I_ _ **know**_ _he's watching this broadcast. After all, every man dreams of making me his wife. He probably already regrets his choice._

 _So he broke up with you?_

 _I don't kill and tell._

Audience laughter.

 _I certainly feel sorry for him. Maybe you'd like to try me for a rebound?_

More polite laughter. _Sorry, but I think I'll take a break for a while._

The girl was beginning to feel frantic. Her wrists were turning; she was trying to unscrew her hands. She should be able to unscrew her hands. And why were her feet not working? She needed to get out of here. She needed to move. She needed to go!

"Nurse! Nurse, come quickly!"

The interviewer and the pop star continued to speak pleasantly in the background on the hospital television, a brilliant spectacle of celebrity glory. Three nurses tumbled into the room, shoving a linen cart out of the way, knocking over the janitor in the process. He quickly took off, not wanting to be around when the staff began to care for the crazy individual thrashing around in the hospital bed.

Turquoise eyes wild with rage and fear flashed angrily beneath a mop of messy turquoise green hair. What once was probably held up in two pig-tails was now a straw and stringy pile, tendrils collected into massive knots and strands streaming over her face. Her arms fought in the straightjacket she wore, legs kicking in the bed, somehow having worked their way out of their restraints. The sedative would still be powerful enough to keep her from getting up, however.

"Restrain those legs, I'll get the second dose of sedative." One nurse commanded to another.

There was a silent period in which the nurses bustled around the room, completing their duties with a sense of calm urgency. The girl screamed concise nonsense, which sounded like it might be a language none of the women present could understand. Two of them could only speak Japanese and broken English, one was fluent in English and Spanish. None of those languages was being spoken.

The doctor came in, only when the girl had calmed from her second dose of sedative. Her eyes were wide and glassy, her mouth opening and shutting slowly like a fish out of water. The doctor looked pleased.

Running a hand over her ankle, he lifted it as far as the restraint would allow and frowned.

"Which one of you bruised her?"

The nurses looked to one another accusingly, backing slowly away from the bed and toward the door.

"She was fighting the restraints sir, and was out of them. I think the janitor was going to change her sheets, maybe he undid them?"

He looked back to his patient, and when his back was turned, the nurses made their way out of the room. It'd been three days since the pig-tailed patient had been admitted. None of them liked to have to be present in her room. She gave them the creeps.

 _… sing some of the lyrics for us now?_

 _You'll have to wait for the show._

"Let's try this again, now that you're more calm."

He reached for a rolling chair and pulled it to the side of the bed, grunting as he took a seat. He arranged his clipboard in his lap and clicked the end of his pen, staring at her deranged face with a gruesome look on his own.

"Tell me how you escaped."

Her eyes turned wildly in her head. If he didn't know better, he might say she was demon possessed.

"What did you do with your phones? Did you remove them mid-synch?"

The patient did not respond, but her eyes drifted to rest on the television, a few seconds longer than she'd looked at anything else.

 _At least sing something. It'd be a shame to send you on your way without one little performance._

A sweet smile. _I can sing this._

The doctor turned his chair to better face the television. It was the first time he'd seen the patient look at anything in particular for any steady period of time. "Luka? She's a famous pop singer. Not as good as you. She's gorgeous though, I've had some interesting dreams."

 _…_ _send the words once locked within my breast to the sky~_

The girl in the hospital bed went completely still; not even a breath came out of her lungs. Her eyes, once far away and crazed, began to clear, and focused, quite distinctly, on the television. The doctor held his breath.

 _These things I want to tell you  
The things I want to reach you_ _  
May they join a line_ _  
That they may reach you, so far away from me~_

The teal-haired girl watched the television, eyes staring fixatedly, her mouth beginning to tremble. The doctor refused to move, or breathe at all, afraid he would ruin whatever was coming next. He turned, as slowly as he possibly could, to peer at the television set. That beautiful minx of a pop singer was swaying delicately on stage, her hands wrapped around a microphone, eyes closed gently and mouth open to pour the very heart and soul out of her internal being. She sang without music. As it was the first time he'd heard the pop singers raw, unedited voice, it struck something in his memory. It sounded suspiciously a lot like-

His thoughts were cut in half by the most wonderful sound he'd heard in five long months of desperation and long nights of research. His patient had begun to hum along with the song. So excited to see this connection, he tore his eyes away from the pop princess on the t.v. and watched eagerly the face of his patient, waiting desperately for the breakthrough he needed. If he lost this patient, he'd also lose his job, and his family along with it.

Slowly, but ever surely the girl's eyes cleared, becoming much more human and less not, forming themselves into rivers of emotion that had not passed over her face since the experiments had started. The doctor feared that he had ruined her. But here she was, coming back, transforming before his very eyes.

The girl sat up slowly, ever so slowly, finding difficulty with the straight jacket. The doctor refused to help. Touching her could cause the patient to reverse.

 _Tell me, I wanna know about your world!_

… _Tell Your World~_

The song ended and the audience of the talk-show applauded like the sun itself had risen in the period of a hundred year darkness. But the doctor was focused on the girl. She did not stir, did not move, until the show broke to commercial break, something about shrimp flavored chips being awesome.

Slowly, the patient turned her now relatively sane expression to the doctor, her eyes filled with only the deepest and most profound reflection of loathing. The doctor felt gleefully overjoyed, and more so when he heard her musically soprano pitched voice speak for the first time in months.

"That… is **my** song."


	3. Chapter 3

Good evening! This chapter introduces another character. I will have many vocaloids in this story, but this character is very important to the plot. I'll tell you my inspiration behind this later. If I told you now, it'd be a spoiler!

The theme song for this chapter is "Hello How Are You" by Yuzuki Yukari.

* * *

Chapter Three: What is family?

"Hello!"

Birds chirped outside, answering to the adorable voice floating out of the window. The wind barely whispered, and frogs and crickets were silent, even as the sun began to rise. Notes picked apart lazily on a piano, hesitant and indicative of a new learner.

 _I opened my window and whispered_

' _How are you?' alone in my room with no one._

 _Morning!_

The song continued to play with rising grace, the new learner becoming more accustomed to the piano keys. Her hands no longer hesitated, but her body moved with the motions of her arms, swaying in and out against the tide of the music, lyrics flowing out of her, unplanned. The tips of the back of her lavender pixie cut brushed against the purple collar of her bunny hoodie, front strands of hair long and pulled into two very loose pigtails. Eyes closed, mouth opened to share her troubles with the world, the young girl sang on, unashamed.

 _Hello!_

 _I think that kind of person only appeared in old anime._

 _How are you?_

 _I'm so jealous, that someone can be loved by all._

Despite the negative connotations of the lyrics she sang, the girl somehow managed to stay cheerful. The birds never once stopped their chirping, pleased to have such a lovely accompaniment with their morning song as the sun rose high in the sky. Unaware to the rabbit-esque female, someone behind her was watching, listening, paused in the hallway behind the paper screen door of the traditional Japanese home.

" _Oh well whatever" has become my favorite phrase_

 _That line from yesterday went straight over my head:_

" _I don't have any expectations of you anymore"_

The girl's fingers faltered at that, and the visitor in the hallway stiffened. Both individuals seemed to pause, the first in confusion at how to continue with the song, the second out of concern for the first. But the lavender-haired girl simply leaned forward and began to pick at one high key repeatedly, frowning to hear that the piano needed tuning.

The visitor in the hallway sighed visibly, wrapping her arms around her narrow waist and leaning her forehead against the wooden frame of the paper door. The long strands of her rose-pink hair were wrapped up into a bun on the top of her head today, bangs swept gently to the side. It was the one day Megurine Luka felt relaxed enough to look imperfect; it was the day she had come home.

Steeling herself against what was sure to be painful, she gently slid the paper door open the rest of the way and took a few slow steps into the room, careful to keep her sock-feet silent on the wooden floor.

The girl didn't stir, so busy was she banging out scales on the piano to find any other horrid notes. Luka, having expected the younger female to turn around and notice her by now, lingered awkwardly behind her, afraid to call attention to herself. It was guilt that gnawed at her stomach, guilt at knowing that the sad things the girl had been singing in the song had been about her. Tentatively, she reached forward as if to tap the girl on the shoulder, then thought better of it, and bravely grabbed for the bunny hood and scooped it up over her head. Not wasting another second, she sped forward and wrapped her arms around the girl and snuggled her tight, kissing the top of her head.

The girl muffled a soft cry in the fabric of the hood that had covered her mouth, and immediately began to beat her fists at the arms that encircled her, ready to scream murder and wake her father who was sleeping on the other side of the very large house. But a soft, tentative giggle laid all her fears to waste, and left her soaring with hope and relief.

"Onee-san!"

"Yukari-," Luka could hardly get a word out as the younger girl twisted about in her arms and threw her own tightly around her neck. She choked for a second, knocked clear of wind, then balanced herself and held tightly back to the younger sister she hadn't seen in two very long years.

A moment passed in which the two females stood happily together. But as life will have it, memory came down like a sharp knife between them, and Yukari Yuzuki quickly pulled away again as if she'd been burned. She plopped her bottom back down on the piano bench and looked emotionlessly up at her older sister, fixing the bunny hood on her head until it lay correctly again and she could see.

Luka swallowed and gently lowered herself to sit crisscross on the floor, folding her arms in her lap and keeping her eyes averted, waiting for the punishment that was due to come.

Seconds passed in which Yukari simply stared at the other female, words failing her. There was a lot of emotion welling up inside the young girl, but she did not know where to begin. Seeing her sister again after so long was both a blessing and a curse. She wanted to forgive the time lost and catch up, but the wound had been deep.

Luka sighed, realizing she would have to be the one to break the silence.

"That song was lovely. You're such a wonderful singer. Are you going to follow in my footsteps?"

"I don't need to." Yukari answered bluntly, wishing she hadn't been so harsh immediately after she'd said it.

Luka smiled gently, her heart wilting just a little bit. She nodded, folding her fingers together. "Of course not, I did not mean to imply-…" She hesitated. "The song you sang earlier? Is it in reference to me?"

"Not everything's about you." Yukari couldn't stop herself. Sickeningly, she wanted to hurt her sister for abandoning her, and something inside her would not be satisfied until she had her revenge. "Even though you think it is."

Luka's lips thinned, her heart heavy.

"True. I needed to hear that."

Yukari was silent again, feeling chastised somehow. She started to turn back to the piano but paused when Luka rose to her feet again.

"Well, I'm sorry it took me so long. But I was really hoping to get back and talk to you today. I suppose it'll take some time to forgive me."

Yukari could hardly believe it to see the back of that pink bun and those long, perfect legs walking away from her. She pouted and huffed, then leapt off the seat and sped forward, pinning her sister around the waist and pressing her face into the small of her back.

"Wait-," She mumbled, contrite. "Have breakfast with me. Maybe I can decide to forgive you then."

All she needed to hear was that comforting laugh, and Yukari was happy. Together the sisters made their awkward, rekindling way down the hallway to find the kitchen.

Many hours later in the same household, Yukari was picking out random notes on a guitar. Luka was seated on a cushion beneath the kotatsu with their wizened father, peeling an orange. She grimaced to hear that Yukari had not improved in the slightest at guitar playing; however it was a welcome sound and comforting enough to remind her of home.

Luka and her father hardly spoke to one another. They communicated in a series of grunts and issued sighs, with small glances and harsh looks. While her father was obviously still angry with her lifestyle choice, she had no idea why he was still treating her in this manner after the nine years she'd been in show business. She remembered the conversation like it was yesterday, but never regretted her choice. Only Luka knew the truth, that Kotaro Yuzuki was not their real father. Yukari was blissfully unaware.

"I'll stay for a couple more days, but then I have the concert in Tokyo. I left two tickets for you on the entryway table, if you'd like to come." Luka muttered to her father, loud enough for Yukari to hear in case she wanted to pipe in.

The lavender-haired girl continued to pick ugly notes out on the guitar.

Kotaro Yuzuki sighed, his body heaving and settling like an old, gray mountain shaking in an earthquake. His face was full of deep set wrinkles, craggy canyons betraying his difficult life. He'd never told Luka where he'd adopted the two from, but she figured it wasn't pretty. His secrecy was part of the reason she'd always felt compelled to leave. When she'd found her way out, they'd fallen out as father and daughter pretty much for good.

It just didn't make sense to her that someone so unattached could be so loving.

"I won't go. Yukari cannot go, either. Tokyo is too far and she needs a good night's sleep for school."

Yukari skipped a note on the guitar, her eyes sliding up to fix on her father though her head stayed bowed over the instrument. Luka clenched her teeth, unaware she was also holding her breath.

"Why not? She can miss one day, just to see my concert."

"You know how I feel about the music."

"Obviously not." Luka challenged him, gesturing to Yukari's guitar. "She has so many instruments at her disposal. What is it with you? Why give to her and not to me? Why refuse to join me in something I cherish?"

She resented having to use Yukari as an example, as she wanted nothing more than for her sister to be free unlike she had been. The instruments had all been purchased by her, with her new job. Kotaro had simply allowed Yukari to have them, which is more than he'd allowed for Luka when she was younger.

"I do not have to explain myself to you."

As usual, his tone had a superior note of finality to it that ended all question to any conversation. Yukari waited a long moment, then went back to fiddling with her guitar. Luka waited a tad bit longer, then rose slowly to her feet, smoothing her bangs back against her scalp in frustration.

"I'm going to bed."

And that was how the household functioned. Mr. Yuzuki made a command, and his girls followed, no questions. Luka was reminded each and every time she visited why she didn't want to come back. She seriously contemplated, for the fiftieth time, taking Yukari away from this place. But deep within she did not wish to break the old man's heart. And he'd given so much to them both. Sadly, she would simply have to wait for him to give up or die.

Sliding the door open to her old bedroom, she sought the light switch and clicked it on, happy to see that her multi-colored Japanese lanterns were still hung on the ceiling. She was surprised to find, however, that Yukari's stuff had been moved in. She smiled to herself, wondering if it had been a coping mechanism of the young girl, an attempt to be as close to her sister as possible when she lived on the other side of the world.

She walked slowly to her suitcase and tugged it bit by bit over to the closet. Sliding the door open, she pulled out the futon and sheets, tossing them across the floor, then stuffed the suitcase inside. A small corner of it stuck out, preventing the door from sliding closed when she tried. Frustrated, from the after-dinner conversation and now this, she kicked at the suitcase repeatedly, shoving at it with both her foot and her hands. The suitcase banged against the wall repeatedly, vibrating and rattling the frame, until it slid in neatly with a soft bang. As the walls shook again, an avalanche of items came tumbling off of the top shelf, including a shoe box full of knick-knacks from Luka's teenage years.

Crying out in surprise, she protected her face from mild injury, then bent down to immediately begin to pick the items up. Sheets of music she'd written when younger sprawled before her, covered in lyrics and notes she'd frantically copied down just to get out of her. The lines of a few of them caught her eye. Pulling the paper closer, her brows knit together in confusion. The date on the top of the page was from before her adoption by Kotaro.

She didn't remember writing this.

The lyrics before her were the same exact ones of the song she'd sung without music on the talk show one week ago. "Tell your world" was scribbled loosely across the top, followed by word for word lyrics.

"How did I remember this song?"

Musing to herself, she wondered how she'd been able to recall those lyrics to perform them during the talk show. Put on the spot for a performance, she'd searched her mind for something simple and as completely unrelated to her ex-boyfriend as possible, and the lyrics had popped into her head. Deciding this was something she could figure out later, she folded the paper into quarters, then reached over to unzip the front pocket of her luggage and slipped it inside. She quickly reorganized the rest of the fallen items, standing to place them back in their proper place.

Leaning down for the last item, a plain wooden jewelry box large enough to hold the space of three books, she froze to see it had popped open. Beneath the shallow wooden bottom a corner of the plywood had popped up. Something gold glinted and shown from within.

Excited that she might have found some old treasure hiding in her bedroom, she quickly lowered to her knees and picked at the hole in the box, wiggling her fingers in between the two pieces of wood and pushing and pulling until it had popped free. An old, bizarre-looking pair of headphones tumbled out and rolled across the floor, lying flat to glint in the light from the lanterns.

She was afraid to touch them, unexplainably so. They were old-fashioned looking, with thick bulbous phones and a fat band that stretched over the scalp. Despite their age, however, they were the most ornate headphones Luka had ever witnessed. They appeared to be made of pure gold. The band was a dark maroon leather of some sort, with thick gold crisscrossing lacing over the top. The ear-phones themselves were fat ovals cut off with a blunt edge in the back, the same maroon color in two thick indented strips, with some sort of blue glass shaped like a thick "D". Protruding from the right phone was a black strand ending in what looked like a small microphone. Altogether, the bizarre object looked like it might be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Luka wasn't sure why her hands were shaking as she reached for them, but the shaking stopped the moment her fingers grazed the cool metal. Quickly pulling them within reach, she studied the object, searching for the plug where one could insert the audio cable. Though that was missing, she noticed another oddity. In place of the cloth protective covering on the inside of the ear-phone were three sharp-looking metal prongs, the kind you use to plug into a power outlet.

She was about to raise the phones up over her head and fit them over her ears when she heard gentle footsteps in the hallway. Thinking fast, for reasons unknown to her desire for secrecy, she yanked down on her luggage and stuffed the phones haphazardly into the largest pocket she came to first, pulling out handful of underwear and bras to make room for it.

Yukari slid open the door, raising one brow to find her sister collapsed on the floor with a pile of panties and bras scattered in her lap and around her. Luka flushed and quickly began to rummage through her suitcase, shaking her head.

"Sorry, luggage issues. I'll clean this up. I didn't know you were staying in my room now."

Yukari shrugged as she stepped into the room, pulling the futon over to straighten it out. She hadn't remembered her sister to be such a slob.

"I like the lanterns. The colors make me happy."

Luka located her pajamas and stuffed the unmentionables away, smiling sweetly over her shoulder at her sister.

"They did for me, too. I guess I can stay in your old room tonight."

She made as if to head for the exit, but Yukari stopped her with a hand on the sleeve of her sweater. Luka's smile widened, her heart bursting.

"Onee-chan, stay with me."

Lights flashed in front of the hospital, blue and red, blue and red, echoing off of walls and bouncing in through exposed windows, ignoring any idea of hurting someone's eyes. The police cars, abandoned by their officers, waited patiently, signaling to any passerby that something intense was going down at the hospital that night. There were four of them. The higher the number of police cars, the higher the intensity of the issue.

A doctor was shouting until he was blue in the face in the waiting room, gesturing madly at the bored and overly exhausted cops who were taking his testimony. He went a very interesting shade of purple as one of the cops told him to calm down. The nurses who had been held behind on their shift sat dejectedly in the hard waiting room seats, their eyes indicating their minds were on some vacation in the Bahamas rather than their unlucky job with their unlucky boss.

Outside, a lady walked her dog in the park across the street. A man took a piss. A couple held hands, blushing, and prayed for snow to catch them outside for a kiss. And a teal-haired, pig-tailed girl was raiding the back of an ambulance for something to wear. Locating a blue set of scrubs, she tore off her shredded straight jacket and flimsy hospital gown, uncaring of modesty, and quickly tugged the loose scrubs over her body. Stealing a baseball cap from the driver's seat, she tucked her hair as well as she could into a messy ponytail out the back and took off quickly down the street, knowing she had very little time where that doctor was concerned.

She didn't know where she was going, but she knew who she had to find. It had been a long time since the girl had attended anything recreational. She thought it might be nice to go to a concert…


	4. Chapter 4

Good evening! This is my longest chapter yet, but that's because it's the most important. The chapter title is a play on words. _Luka, Luka Night Fever_ is a popular Megurine Luka song, but it's also foreshadowing of what happens at the end. For you Miku fans, she's more solidly present in this chapter. Miku is a very important character. It's just taking a while to work up to revealing her.

The song referenced in this chapter is _Last Song_ by Megurine Luka.

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Chapter Four: Luka, Luka Night Fever

The concert hall was buzzing with total electricity. Fans were waiting outside in a line most had been standing in for five solid hours, all in the hopes that they would get the best position to be as close to pop princess Megurine Luka as possible. Some prayed a drop of sweat would sprinkle their way, others a towel or head-band would be tossed. Some wore replicas of costumes she'd worn in various music videos, wigs were bright pink and everywhere, and families with young children were present, though they hung back from the crazy part of the crowd.

Deep inside the concert hall, in the green room the diva was preparing herself. She didn't have a pre-show ritual like some stars, but rather preferred to run her mind through her music sets, making sure she hadn't missed anything, and imagine what dance moves she knew would be the most difficult and remind herself how to make them perfect. All around her, staff and personnel hired by her manager bustled about the room, laying flowers, gifts from major corporations, on her dressing table, organizing the bouquets and placing costumes in the correct order on the rack. Stacks of makeup littered the vanity, three different piles of eyelashes, some glittery and multi-colored, others thick and luscious, supporting the multiple tubes of lipstick and trays of varied colored eye shadows.

In the corner, as to be out of the way of the staff, Luka bopped her foot in time to the beat in her head, wrapped in a simple bathrobe, her hair already done up in large, bouncing curls for the first set. She was not the star of the pre-show. It was best for her to stay out of the way, and allow Todd Bulinsky, her manager, to have his way. She imagined him on stage now, arguing with the sound staff about some trivial notion.

Luka's luggage from the night before lay open and exposed on the sofa on the opposite wall, her items being unpacked by one of the secretaries. The essentials for the show Luka had insisted on carrying with her were being loaded onto a rolling cart, so her assistants would have easy access to everything needed. The top tray had all of her audio equipment lined up: the sparkling glitter pink headset and microphone first, followed by the black lace one to match with her punk rock songs, finally followed up by various designs and back up mics and phones in case one decided not to work. Luka missed it entirely when the secretary located the antique, solid gold headset Luka had found in her home the night before, stared at it oddly, then placed it at the end of the lineup of headsets on the top tray of the rolling cart.

Todd came bustling into the room, flicking his fingers at the bud of a white rose from one of the bouquets on the dressing table. Eyes falling on his prized diva in the corner, he smiled lazily and made a beeline for her, knocking over a young intern in the process. She sighed her protestation but Todd ignored it, sinking into the empty seat beside the rosy haired beauty.

"Curtains up in forty-five minutes."

"I know." Luka replied without looking up, her eyes half-narrowed and her head bobbing along in time to some imaginary beat in her head.

Todd rubbed his sweaty palms on his khaki pants, then peered around the room, rolling his eyes. "The Japanese don't know how to treat a manager. I can't wait to make it back to New York."

Luka ignored him. It was what she did best where he was concerned.

"Good luck tonight. I'll be on the other side of back stage. I won't bother you. I know you like to be left alone."

Luka paused mid-beat, her foot stilling. She smiled a little, then directed it to her manager with a grateful nod. "Thank you."

"Just make sure to win that audience, babe. We'll have it in the bag."

And the moment for Luka to appreciate her manager was over. She turned her gaze back to the carpet, folding her hands in her lap. Todd waited for her to say anything, then realizing she wasn't, stood and made his awkward way over to the cluster of employees he'd hired to help his pop princess for the evening.

"Okay, you've done it all. It looks great in here. Let's give her some time, okay?" He ushered them out of the room slowly, waving his hands at the interns and regular stage workers. They bustled out of the room one by one, taking an abundance of flowers with them that would not fit in any of the space in Luka's dressing room. She always had more than she could count.

Only when the door closed and the sound of excitement became muffled did Luka sigh and stop keeping time in her head. She closed her eyes and leaned back on the sofa, careful not to scrunch her hair, but stretched her arms along the back and tried to relax. She'd need to be getting changed soon.

Three comfortable minutes of almost-silence had passed when there was a soft, timid knock on the door. Luka mumbled her admittance, not budging from her position. She knew it would simply be Todd or one of the interns. They'd do what they needed to and they'd leave.

The door opened slowly and the visitor entered, quickly shutting the door, albeit quietly, behind them. Luka waited to hear the visitor move around the room, to pick up some lost item, to ask her a question, to tell her she'd brought something or was there to help her changed into her costume. The visitor said nothing.

Sitting up slowly, she leveled her eyes on the newcomer and blinked in surprise. Before her stood a girl maybe a few years younger than her with bright turquoise green hair. Luka had never met someone with such colored hair as her own before. Her own pink hair came naturally, but that wasn't what they told the world. To the public, she simply had a great stylist. Her father had explained her and her sisters hair color with something about nuclear activity at the orphanage they'd grown up in. She had never believed it, which was part of the reason she'd been so angry at him and left.

But in all her remembered lifetime, Luka couldn't remember seeing colored hair so vivid and luscious as her own. Dyed hair was fake, and she could tell. But this girl's was real, and it made her uneasy. The way the girl was looking at her didn't help that uneasy feeling, either.

"Hello," Luka offered tentatively. The girl didn't move. She stood frozen, as if fear, or something worse, had locked her trembling in place. Her shining turquoise eyes were wide open and wild, flashing from one emotion to another, morphing before her. If Luka could describe this girl in one word, unstable would just about cover it.

"Are you a new intern? Did Todd send you for something?"

It was then she noticed the girls' attire. She was dressed in a pair of dirty blue scrubs and sneakers two sizes two big. The laces dragged on the floor. Her hair, though it seemed to have been carefully arranged into two pigtails once more, held evidence of ill care. Knots tangled up the silken strands and dirt and grease streaked the roots at the scalp. Two scrapes were visible on the girls' cheek and arm. This was not an intern.

"Fans aren't allowed back here." Luka uttered quickly, a note of alarm rising in her voice. She fought to keep it under control, rising quickly to her feet. The motion was a mistake however, as it seemed to startle the girl. She shrank back, eyes widening, then suddenly narrowing in controlled anger.

"You don't remember me…?" She spoke quietly, her voice husky from disuse. It wasn't quite a question, but more a frustrated realization.

Luka shook her head, starting to step as inconspicuously as possible toward the telephone on the vanity table. She wondered what the girl would do if she noticed the movement.

"No," She spoke soothingly, taking on the tone of voice she used to speak to overly adoring fans at album signings: carefully ambiguous yet sweet, polite. "But perhaps you could remind me? I meet so many fans all the time. Did you write mail to me?"

"No, no." The girl knocked a fist against her forehead, tugging on a long strand of hair from a pigtail with her other hand. Her frustration was quite evident. "I'm not a fan. You **know** me."

The pop princess could only nod, flabbergasted. Quickly she searched through her memories, frantically trying to find a time she could remember a girl as obvious as this one. She was certain the hair would have stood out to her.

"I'm sorry," She began, then wondered if flattery might work. "Your hair-… it's quite lovely in color. I'm very sure I would remember you if we had met."

It was the right thing to say. The girl lowered her hands slowly, her eyes widening less, and she glanced up at the song diva from beneath thick, teal-blue lashes. It seemed to Luka that a little more color had come into her cheeks. And with that it dawned on her what type of fan this girl might be.

"Not to mention your beauty. I know, I would remember you if we had met."

The girl's cheeks flushed slightly and Luka's heart melted in relief out of the knot of tension it had become in her chest. She smiled slightly, more convinced she could talk herself out of the situation now that she knew what the girl wanted, but stiffened into shock as the temper of the girl rapidly changed and she charged closer.

"No-… No! You don't get to say that to me!" She cried, and pointed a jagged pair of floral scissors, quickly snatched off of the dressing table where the flowers were, straight at Luka's face.

She froze, now trembling with real fear, and tried not to show it. Calmly, she held her palms forward, eyes glancing to the clock hanging above the door. She needed to be at sound check in five minutes. That is, if she didn't die first at the hand of a love-sick and psychotic fan.

"Okay. I'll say whatever you like. But it won't help you to spill my blood, right?"

The girls angry brows smoothed slightly, then she nodded in agreement and slowly lowered the scissors, stepping back a few steps. She held tightly to them still, and franticly looked about the room, rubbing her arm with a free hand as if she was freezing cold.

"I can't believe this. They're winning-… they're winning. I need to stop this."

Luka didn't say a word, hoping the girl would decide to leave on her own. So far everything she'd tried to say to talk herself out of the situation had backfired. It was time to allow fate to decide.

The girl's eyes darted here and there, finally coming to rest on the top of the metal rolling cart that contained Luka's sound gear for the show. She visibly melted with relief and wiped her forehead, sighing with an almost joy-like sound as she raised the scissors to point at the pop princess. Luka backed one step away, hands raised again to defend herself.

"Turn around. I swear-… I will not hurt you. I merely want to leave. You cannot see me leave. You'll follow me."

Unsure if she could believe her or not, but knowing she had no other choice, Luka complied, turning slowly to expose her back to the insane girl with the jagged pair of scissors.

Behind her, the pig-tailed female had moved quickly to the metal cart, hesitating as she stared at that antique, solid gold pair of headphones. She reached down and grabbed all of the spare pairs of headphones besides the original pink and black pair, then smoothly nudged the antique pair to the third spot. She juggled the rest on her arm, making certain they would leave with her.

Luka could hear her fumbling about but had absolutely no idea what the girl was messing with. Her shoulders trembled and shook as she hoped silently she would quickly back from the room and take her leave. The longer she stayed, the more nervous she got.

"I am going now." The girl spoke, her own voice betraying a tremble. She hesitated, staring long and hard at the back of the pink-haired female, then backed quickly from the room and threw open the door, darting down the hallway and letting it slam behind her.

The instant she heard the door open, Luka turned and darted after her, gripping the frame of the door to pull herself around quickly as she ran down the hall after the girl. But the girl was too fast, and soon she was gone, only a wisp of long, turquoise green hair disappearing around the corner of a hallway.

"What are you doing?!" The voice of Todd, her manager, was a welcome sound after that horrifying experience. She whirled to see him glaring at her, and felt his rough hands man-handle her into the dressing room. "It's sound check time and you're still naked!"

The roar of the crowd was a drug. Megurine Luka lost herself in the sound, merely using its existence as another beat for the music that thrummed within her heart. Eyes closed, she swayed her hips to the beat of her audience's breath, throwing out her arms and giving them exactly what they wanted. But it was what she wanted, too. She lived for this. It was her only ecstasy.

Her body began to pump and move, her arms swinging to the beat, tossing her head, now wearing a super straight, long ponytail which she whipped around before leaning back into a body roll, her hips gyrating, clad in skin-tight navy blue leather. Her backup dancers, wearing much the same but designed to draw less attention, followed her every move as she belted from the heart and soul of her being the lyrics to her most famous dance tune "Luka, Luka Night Fever". Her body glistened in sparkling sweat, and the audience adored her for it, soaking up her hard work as she played herself for them, a beautiful marionette on stage.

When the song came to an abrupt end, she struck her pose as the lights shut off in the stage. The crowd roared, chanting her name and calling her back, a siren call to the pop princess who could never refuse those lights on her body, those humans paying homage to the tune her voice could carry. Quickly ushered off stage, she welcomed the towel and cleared her face, then allowed her crew to work their magic. They jostled her to and fro as they quickly altered makeup, pulling her hair from the ponytail and letting it hang, smashing a real, living flower crown around her head, and wardrobe stuffed her body into a white linen gown. Stepping into black boots, she smoothed her fingers through her hair and steadied her thrumming nerves.

You can do this, Luka, she told herself. You're the star. Teruo is watching. Make him jealous.

The chants bored into her mind like the roar of the wind as you dive from a plane without a parachute. Luka grinned and bounced on stage, waving at her audience and winking at a group of wild fans practically breaking their ribs against the gate up front for a chance to be near her.

"Good evening, TOKYO!" She cried gleefully. Her audience ate it up.

"It's time to reveal my new single: Just Be Friends. It's only been rumored up until now, but you're the first ones to hear it! Please, get your phones ready. Send this song to the world!"

Pumping her fist in the air, she spun in place and took her pose for the beginning of the song. As the music cued, she swayed and fell easily into the lyrics, following the music exactly, perfectly executing every dance move, not even struggling over a single lyric. It was a new Luka. She had written personal and overcome the agony. It momentarily struck her that the relationship with Teruo might not have been as important as she originally thought, if it was this easy to sing about it in public.

But as Luka went back stage to change scenes yet again, she explored the truth inside herself. Honestly, the only reason she may have been able to perform such a personal song without becoming upset was that she was still upset about something else: the visit from the creepy fan before. Every time she left the glow of the stage to slink back stage into the pitch darkness, she worried the girl would be there, somewhere, waiting with some violent action in mind.

She shook her head to get her mind together, and wiped her face again with a towel offered her, chugging a brief swig of water. On stage the backup dancers were covering for her absence. She had exactly a three minute break to change and recover herself before the final set. Slowly changing into her final costume, a busty black and purple Victorian gown complete with corset and scarlet ribbons, she removed the headset from the "Just Be Friends" costume and handed it to the intern in charge of her sound gear. The intern placed the new headset into her hands and went away, leaving her alone, waiting upon the trap-door elevator that was to raise her up amid fireworks blasting and a laser light show, where she was to descend for her final list of songs.

Luka smoothed a hand over her face and shook her head, clearing her throat and setting her mind into focus. Just three more songs and then the encore. The evening would be over. She could take a long, hot bath in lavender bubbles, drink a glass of wine and go to sleep knowing that she had the best job in the world.

Nodding to herself to set her resolve to finish strong, she pulled the headset up over her head, realizing only far too late that the color of this headset was wrong, that it was a completely useless headset, one she'd found in her closet a day before, one that wouldn't do its job, wouldn't look right with her costume, wouldn't be anything good as a million wrong thoughts flooded into Luka's mind in that moment.

But as the metal prongs on the inside of the earphones settled over her head, just behind her ears, Luka realized that nothing had ever felt more right. They sunk in behind her ears with ease, seeming to click into spaces that had been made for them, their very size and shape. As they slid into place, the phones molding over her ears, lights flashed from both sets around her and sparkled like lightning. Luka's heart swelled with an unexplainable emotion as her body tingled to the tip of every nerve fiber, her skin pimpling gooseflesh, rolls of delight rippling through her mustles as she strained up on her tiptoes, feeling a powerful force move its way over her body.

The phones vibrated upon her skull as every sound around her echoed perfectly in her ears. She heard the stomping beat of the crowd, the roar of the wind outside, the burning of the stars and the rotating pull of the earth swirling around the sun. Every single breath she whispered into that tiny black microphone echoed back to her melodically, turned into a sing-song note she heard within the phones, and a yearning she could not explain began to consume her heart.

Tears welled in her eyes as she opened them, peering down at her body. Her elaborate, Victorian costume was gone. In its place was an electrifying ensemble: slick black fabric made up a thigh-high slitted skirt, a double wrapped belt matching the band of the headphones circled her hips, and sparkling, pure gold boots fitted her feet up to her knees, slick black tights covering the rest of the way up to mid thigh, rimmed in gold. The same fabric covered her torso, a tunic of unearthly proportions, shimmering with an ethereal manner worthy only of some alien princess in a sci-fi novel. An ornate gold jewelry piece adorned her breastbone, a small turquoise jewel rested just above around the hollow of her throat, and solid black and gold cuffs wrapped around her upper arms. Her fingernails actually glowed with the same bright blue color of the tips of the cuffs on her arms and the phones resting upon her head. And wrapped around her mid-arm, extended in a flare to her wrist, was a large gold cuff with some sort of electrical panel. The screen glowed brightly with the same bright blue color, setting off a glare that illuminated Luka's face as she raised her arm to peer at it.

Tears continued to stream down her face, and she knew not why. The outfit didn't bother her. It felt complete. She felt whole. She felt perfect and new. Wiping her eyes with trembling fingers, she closed them against the new sensations she felt vibrating in her skull. Something was happening to her brain. The only human way to explain it was to compare it with a software download on a computer. She knew, she could see it in her mind, that the headphones she wore were computing data, morphing her very DNA into something more understandable, more compatible with the operating system the phones had to use.

Gazing at the control panel on her sleeve, Luka studied the buttons, blinking past the blur of information scrolling across her mind, interrupting her thoughts. She pushed a button, and a shiver moved through her body, every hair on her arms standing on end. She sighed in ecstasy at the relief the feeling brought her, and pushed another button, answering to the overwhelming urge to open her throat.

She closed her eyes to everything around her and let her emotion pour out. She sang in ways she had never remembered singing before. Her voice and her heart leapt up with joy, down in anguish, and twisted on roller-coasters of pitch and beat and sound as she held her body with her own arms, feeling like she might tear herself in two. Tears rolled again, unbidden down her cheeks, as the sound that proceeded out of her shocked her audience into silence.

A notion that she was being watched brought Luka into a panting quiet. Opening her eyes, she squinted in the bright glare of the stage, unaware that she had been raised upward on the elevator platform. She should be singing her third to final song. She should be dancing, matching the song and the beat that had been playing. But she hadn't, and now all was silent.

Somehow she heard her manager, from way across the room, whisper something about her wearing the wrong costume. "Where did that costume even come from?" he said. Luka shuddered, feeling disgust roll through her body at the sound of his plain, non-musical voice. She had to remove it from her head.

Taking a step forward toward the crowd, keeping her eyes closed against the glare of the light, she raised her palms toward the loving fans that made her who she was. Or rather, that used to make her who she was.

For now, they were utterly silent. No one in the audience spoke a word. Not a single baby cried, not a person coughed or sneezed, not a sound. All waited with bated breath to hear even a slight iota of that pure unadulterated sound that had left their pop goddess only seconds before. They wanted, they needed more.

"I apologize," Luka uttered gently into the microphone. Her voice echoed loudly around every corner of the room, soft and sultry, other-wordly. Without thinking about it, she pressed two or three buttons on the control panel on her arm and the sound dialed back, controlled. "You came here for a song. I will leave you with this."

Gone was the hype of a well-planned concert. Gone was the diva who knew what she was doing. In her place was a creature who did not care for the minds of others. This creature knew only the nature of song and how to share it with others, how to feel it grow until it was its own living being, an extra in the room beside them.

Her arms extended as if she might hug the audience for an eternity, Luka closed her eyes and opened her mouth to release euphoria.

 _Leaving me with one tiny last kiss_

 _You quietly walked out of the room_

 _I can't stop you neither can I bear it in silence_

 _Unsteadily I picked up my guitar in the corner of the room_

The very floor of the concert hall shook, the walls rumbling with the power of a new voice and element the earth had never met. Lowering her arms slowly, Luka naturally allowed her hand to drift to that panel, fingers controlling and manipulating the buttons, and music came from seemingly nowhere, accompanying the goddess' voice.

The audience remained still, held sway as if a spell had taken over.

 _I love you,_

 _I love you,_

 _ahhh ahhh_

 _But it doesn't work_

 _Doesn't work_

 _Things have fallen apart_

The barrier gate at the front of the stage began to shake. Luka withstood it, a leader in proud glory, filling each and every note with raging emotion until the song took on a soul of its own. The audience urged forward, pushing toward the stage, broken out of their silent slumber at the agonizing tone in Luka's voice, something driving them into a frenzied craze. It filled the air, and Luka commanded it, driving it purposefully into the souls of her audience.

Her heart swelled until bursting, some lost love eating away at her. She knew the lyrics, her mind recognized them, her heart craved them. She'd sung them long ago, when she'd lost something, something very special. Somewhere across time and space this song had rung, carrying her hope and passionate wish that the listener would hear it and return to her.

 _I love you,_

 _I love you, ahhh_

 _But it doesn't work_

 _Doesn't work_

 _Things have fallen apart…_

As the song fell to a close, Luka's eyes slid open, blinded again by the stage lights. As the last note rang out, the entire audience fell silent. A few seconds of bliss filled the moment and Luka panted for air, her body feeling some empty sort of agony as if she'd lost something very important. But then the moment was gone.

The crowd exploded into an uproar. Screams and frantic demands were shouted, cat-calls drowned out by grunting verbalizations of dark promises. Those on the front line were pressed so hard against the gate that it collapsed, some of the victims not rising as they were trampled by a surge of people trying to get to the stage.

"I love you-,"

"She's mine, I will have her."

"Get out of my way- LUKAAA!"

Almost as if awakening out of a trance, Luka's eyes popped open and she threw her hands to the headphones. Before the power of the phones could snap her out of it, she yanked them off of her head, knowing deep down that whatever was happening was at the fault of the object. Immediately she screamed out in violent agony, her head feeling as if it was split into two as she slumped to the stage floor in a pool of purple and black Victorian lace, the bizarre black silken outfit vanished.

Luka's head throbbed in pain as she moaned and tried to right herself again. The world tipped on edge and her stomach rolled, suddenly nauseous. She was aware of rough hands grabbing her underneath her arms, dragging her away from a swarm of frantic-eyed people storming the stage. Their limbs were like the legs of spiders, wriggling up over the tall edge of the stage, assisting in pulling their lumpy forms to full height. As they stabilized, some of them began to run straight for her, darkness looming over their eyes and a look of pure obsession written all over their faces. Glancing up at the face of the person who was now dragging her, she felt relief to see two versions of her manager's face swarming before her, crisscrossing in and out until they became one image.

"Todd…" she groaned quietly, biting her lip to keep herself from throwing up.

"Shut up and just come with me. We have to go. WHERE IS THE BODYGUARD?!"

A flurry of people surrounded her, hands covering her body. She was lifted up, but someone pulled her into their arms and away from the group of people. She heard her manager grunting in pain, but she couldn't focus through the spinning in her head to know what was happening.

Peering through slits in her lids, she tried to make sense of the situation and realized she was still holding those horrid headphones. She wanted to drop them but her hand wouldn't listen, yet remained frozen around their form, clinging like stone.

"You'll be mine. Those others cannot protect you, Luka."

The hot, stinking breath of her bodyguard melted over her face as he lifted her up in his arms. Luka heaved from the abrupt movement, losing the contents of her stomach over her shoulder. This didn't even phase him. He only smiled and pat her on the bottom, moving quickly back stage and through the hall.

"Don't worry, I'll take you home."

"Stop it!" She managed, screaming into his ear and beating him on the shoulder. Dangling upside down from his shoulder didn't help her vertigo, however, and she fought the urge to black-out, squinting her eyes shut against the splitting headache blooming in her skull. It itched like a scorpion, clattering across the bone and sinew, tugging and prodding at the vulnerable synapses in her brain.

A commanding cry alerting the bodyguard to stand down coming from a squad of police was the last sound Luka heard before the scorpion won, blazing her mind into a fury, a terrifying inferno of spasmic pain. She gave in to the darkness and blacked out into a world where pain did not exist.


	5. Chapter 5

This is pretty much an action chapter, so there's no song referenced here. There is a song hummed, but if I told you the name it may reveal some plot I don't want to reveal just yet. If you're reading this faithfully, thank you so much! I hope you do enjoy, and I will continue to write until the end as long as someone out there is enjoying to read this story of mine. Thank you.

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Chapter Five: Mr. Kurosawa

Yukari Yuzuki sat hunched over on a bed in the motel, her eyes half-open and staring at the television screen. The news reporters babbled on and on about useless information. It had only been three days since, and her sister's scandalous concert fiasco was hot news. Soon enough the reporters would comment again on the mysterious nature behind the ordeal, and the even more mysterious fact that the pop princess had seemed to have gone missing. No one had heard from her since that last, unusual song on that highly unusual night.

Yukari tried to ignore the burning fear that had started as a mere seedling in the depth of her gut. Every morning she woke to more unease, and it had begun to affect her personal thought process. Every shadow that moved in the dark brought her heart to an unhealthy speed, every lurch of sound that was even the slightest bit unusual set her teeth on edge.

Her father was mostly responsible for this behavior. Yukari was used to Luka being away, and even more used to not knowing what her sister was up to. But the morning after the concert, when Kotaro Yuzuki woke up and turned on the morning news, things began to get weird. Her father hadn't even watched but three seconds of the broadcast, that unearthly song coming out of her sister that did not sound like her sister filling the living room ominously, before he'd shut off the television and commanded her to go pack a bag.

Exactly thirty-three minutes later he'd ushered her into the car and they'd driven to the airport. They flew out of Japan to Hawaii, of all places, and had been holed up in the cheapest hotel for the past two days. He refused, with bitter anger, to explain himself to her, but kept her sequestered, all day long, in this hotel room.

Yukari looked nervously at the clock. He'd left over five hours ago and hadn't come back.

"No reported whereabouts yet on the location of infamous pop star Luka Megurine, but rumors have it that she is back in the well-placed hands of her old flame, Teruo Kurosawa. An insider source told CNN that she was being treated at their private medical facility in the Azabu district of Tokyo."

Yukari swallowed around a lump in her throat and reached again for her cellphone.

 _Where are you, onee-chan?_ She texted.

Similar texts, at least twenty of them, remained unanswered above that one. Her hands trembling, she replaced the phone on the bedside table and pulled her knees up into her chest. If it wasn't so dark outside, she might not be feeling so afraid.

The television went from the depressing newscast stories of various American and world issues to a commercial for cheeseburgers. Allowing her mind to dwell momentarily on the distraction, she set her mind on begging Kotaro to let her go out for one when he returned. She tried to imagine the smell, and closed her eyes to help her imagination work its wonder. It almost fabricated into a real thought when her mind was interrupted by a hard knock on the door.

Her heart leapt into her throat and she froze completely still, eyes wide, much like a rabbit that's caught wind of a fox. Seconds ticked by and the door rattled again with five strong bangs, followed by silence. Yukari forced one foot after another down onto the carpet and stood, zipping up her bunny hoodie over her lavender dress. Wrapping her arms around herself to steady her nerves, she went to the door and leaned up on her tiptoes to peer out of the peephole.

Her father gazed at her through the murky circle outside.

Letting out a deep sigh of relief, Yukari undid the bolt and removed the chain-lock, pulling open the door. Her father, eager to meet up with his daughter once more, fell forward into the apartment and rolled onto the floor. Yukari cried out, then laughed quietly, thinking him only drunk as he'd been many times before, and leaned down to help him up onto his side.

As she rolled him over, Yukari gagged and covered her mouth to conceal a scream. Kotaro's eyes stared up at her, glassy and cold, his mouth hanging slack-open. Blood stained a deep gash on his throat, old and dried, his body like ice.

Yukari was yanked back before she could respond to this horror, a black cloth sack shoved over her face. The last thing she heard was a quiet whisper to stay still, and a needle pierced her throat. Her world went black.

-x-

Megurine Luka stared out of the window, wrapped tightly in a cozy floral shawl. Her hair draped around her, washed but uncared for. Having dried naturally without product, it seemed almost as sad as the female that owned it, while it was used to luxury and expensive bliss it had received only the basic necessity to keep it healthy. The female herself had an expression of loss and grief she had never felt before written across her face. In the matter of four minutes her entire world had been turned upside down, shaken around, and not been put quite rightly back together again.

Turning away from the window, from the rain that pelted against the cold glass and caused it to fog, she seated herself at the little ornate desk and rifled through the newspaper clippings that had been brought to her. The headlines jumped out at her like ghosts from around corners in horror films, each one seeming to jolt her very soul into fright.

 **TWENTY-FIVE DEAD AT POP PRINCESS CONCERT.**

 **BLOOD IN THE WATER: AUDIENCE LOSES ITS MIND.**

 **WHERE IS LUKA: POP PRINCESS A MURDERER?**

Her hands shook as she stared at that last one. Some of her crew had not survived the bizarre happenings of the evening. The public was blaming her, but she couldn't remember what had happened to save her life. The entire event after that last song was a blur. It reappeared in her nightmares, night after night, but details were fuzzy. The audience was a massive, multi-limbed monster roaring toward her, her manager's voice an anchor in a sea of confusion.

Todd Bulinsky was in the hospital now for a fractured skull. Luka had insisted that he receive the same sort of care she was receiving, so he was at the same location, the private hospital of her ex-boyfriend, Teruo Kurosawa. She longed for him to wake-up from his surgery, but understood the need to recover. The only issue was that she felt she wouldn't be able to make sense of that night without her eye-witness to help her. He was also the one that could help to clear her name with the public. Unwilling to admit it, for the first time she knew without a doubt that she was lost without her manager.

Her head turned to the door immediately as she heard it open. But the figure that entered was a friend, and the sight of his face immediately soothed her.

"Teruo."

"No, don't get up." He muttered gently, crossing the room in three long strides. He pressed her back into her seat gently, hands lingering on her shoulders, before he produced a manila envelope before her. "I found that girl you asked me about. This is her file."

Luka gingerly took the envelope from him, rubbing her eyes as a mild pain flared up and throbbed behind them in her brain. She fiddled with the clasps, not quite able to force her fingers to manipulate correctly, before Teruo gently took the envelope from her and pulled the contents out for her. He laid them out one by one on the table, starting with a picture of a teal-haired and very angry beauty, glaring defiantly at the camera lens.

"Her name is Hatsune Miku. She's a convict."

"A convict?!" Luka breathed out in shock.

"Yes. She's been imprisoned at one of my hospitals, actually."

Luka's brows knit together as she pulled the picture closer. The look in the girls' eyes did not elicit the correct response from Luka. She expected to feel afraid to see such anger in an individual that had caused such a riotous downfall to her life, but instead she was merely curious. She hadn't quite been feeling herself since the night of the concert, and it irritated her.

"Imprisoned? In a hospital? Is there such a thing?"

"Yes," Teruo's chest heaved with a heavy breath as he supplied an answer. "It's a hospital for the criminally insane."

"Why did I not know of this when you were thinking of marrying me?"

Teruo frowned at the accusatory tone in her voice, but reminded himself of the issue that she had recently endured. He chose his reply delicately.

"It never came up."

Luka turned to peer up into his warm, hazel brown eyes. His black hair drooped in his face, bringing a gentle smile to her lips. His appearance showed his care for her. Teruo wasn't one to be caught looking shabby, either. He was working hard to tend for her. It was too bad they were only friends.

She turned away before he could see her frown, then picked up the medical information attached to Miku's file. It read that she had escaped quite recently, beating one of her doctors in the face with a fire extinguisher and knocking him out cold for several minutes.

"You're lucky she didn't hurt you, Luka."

She nodded her agreement of the phrase and gathered all of the papers together, including the newspaper clippings, and stuffed them into the envelope. She had enough of the depressing and needed a break for her mental sanity. Standing slowly, she pushed the seat back under the desk and made her way to the hospital bed. Even though it was a hospital, due to its private nature it felt more like a higher-end hotel. Her room was decorated in a French style, with muted pastels and lovely curtains to soothe the spirit. It momentarily struck Luka how strange it was that she, an orphan teen at 16, could somehow come into such opulence.

"A mental hospital for criminals," She mused to herself as she sank onto the mattress, crossing one foot beneath her bottom. "What are the odds I'll get locked up in there after the incident?"

Teruo actually laughed. For some reason, it bothered her.

"I think you're safe. You know the owner."

He stepped forward and leaned down to kiss the top of her head, making as if to head for the door. Luka's heart throbbed with a dull ache. She hated his little gestures like that. It reminded her how much of a fool she'd made of herself when he said that she seemed more like a little sister than a lover.

"I'll visit you tomorrow, I have a dinner party tonight. Try to get some rest, now."

His hand reached for the door knob, but he paused, and turned to smile politely at his medical charge.

"By the way, what did you do with the headphones?"

Luka had just reached for a pillow to rearrange the bed when his words caused her to pause. She looked up at him, surprised to find his eyes had stiffened from gentle and warm to resolved steel. He'd never had a good poker face with her. His tell was the dent in his jaw that meant he was clenching his teeth. He had it now. Something was wrong.

"What headphones?"

A second passed and Teruo's face blanked, covered by a winning and handsome smile.

"Never mind. Get some rest."

And he was gone.

Luka waited a long moment to make sure he was really, truly gone, then stood up and moved to the small wardrobe in the corner of the room. Pulling out the duffle bag the general hospital had given her the night of the concert, after the bodyguard had been apprehended and she'd been driven there in an ambulance, she rifled around the contents until she located those headphones. She pulled them out and held them tight in her fists, staring long and hard at them, unsure about the emotions rolling through her mind.

A thought itched in the back of her head. It had been there for days, since the night of the concert, but Teruo's concern for these ridiculous headphones brought it closer to existence.

"I should try them on again."

She was surprised to find herself whispering the phrase out loud. Shaking her head, she moved back and laid the phones on top of the envelope on the desk, rubbing her temples as her brain throbbed, almost in protestation. For the thousandth time in two days, she slipped her fingers back behind her ears and felt for where those prongs might have entered into her skull. Just as before, there were three small indentions in her skin, dots that formed a triangle when connected. She had never noticed them until after the concert, when the bizarre headphones had made connection and started to, as strange as it sounded, synchronize with her brain.

Her unusual hair color, the indentions behind her ears, the behavior of the audience as she sang like some kind of ancient goddess… Megurine Luka was beginning to wonder if she was even human.

Only one other person was forefront in her mind as she considered these insane ideas. That girl, the one who'd threatened her life and, as they found out from the security footage later, who'd rearranged the phones to ensure Luka would wear THIS pair, also had abnormally colored hair. The hair, the knowledge of the headphones, they weren't a coincidence.

Telling herself that she was alone in the room so there was no danger of making people go crazy, this was just to find out what was going on (and she'd been able to remove them before, right?), Luka reached for the headphones and quickly slipped them up over her head and allowed the metal prongs to slide into place, slipping into the indentions and inserting themselves inside her skull with unprompted ease.

Luka closed her eyes and exhaled in a sigh of ecstasy, feeling whole and content again. Instantly her wardrobe transformed, the phones lighting up as if powering on, flickering a blue glow around the room. She felt an intense euphoria come over her and spun circles in the room, crying gleefully into her microphone. The sound echoed and bounced off of walls, coming back to her like a song through rolling hills. The pain in her brain was gone, lifted away, and the patterns and surging bits of data resumed, downloading once more into the organ within her skull.

Her human intelligence was unable to explain it, but the new Luka didn't care how it worked. It was right and it felt right, and she was a whole being once more. With no one nearby, nothing to hinder her, she didn't even think about removing them. Instead, she began to sway around her room, holding her hands to her face, her eyes closed to the neon glow of the blue lights on her interesting new outfit. She hummed the tune of a song as something like memories began to download, knowing that while she hadn't sung this song in a million years, it was a good song, a lovely one that had brought her peace and comfort and joy.

Images flooded her mind the longer she wore the phones, tall spiraling towers seemingly made of brightly colored gems glittering in the light of four suns, in a land where only day existed and night was fabricated out of something much like magic. She glimpsed cities bright and tall where music and song sweltered out of the city like heat in summer, busting at the seams and echoing emotion. She saw rivers of pink and purple and turquoise, clouds of rainbows and glitter, rain like liquid silver, and the color purple painted on white, a warm, drowsy feeling enveloping her as this last image formed fully in her head.

Luka leaned back and plopped down onto the bed, laying herself down on the mattress with a heavy sigh. The last image remained burned in her mind, bringing color to her cheeks and an overall sense of calm she couldn't remember feeling before. When she closed her eyes, purple was everywhere, and when she opened them again, it was all over the sheets and comforter. A sigh echoed within her headphones, one she had not produced herself, followed by the breathy pronunciation of a word she did not remember having heard before- _Cupidinis_.

The breathy voice whispered something again, inaudible, then all at once turned immediately into something more terrifying. A scream echoed deep within the headphones, rattling around within Luka's skull. She shot straight up, feeling her heart pound hard in her chest, and threw her hands over the phones, staring in anguish at the floor.

The scream continued, followed by a heavy sob, and then a very distinct moaning of a name.

 _Luka-_

Luka's hands trembled as she stood slowly, listening hard for the voice she horrifyingly recognized all too well: it was the voice of her sister. But it was fading away, leaving the sound around her, and more nearby sounds enclosed, like the sound of a blender being fired up in the hospital kitchen, the sound of a nurse coughing and marching up the hallway toward Luka's room.

In a panic, she wrenched the headphones off of her head, screaming as her mind once more split in pain. Staggering forward, she stuffed them under a pillow and collapsed onto the bed, hiding her face in the pillow to disguise her cries of anguish. In moments she had controlled her voice though the pain still viciously consumed her mind. She had enough sense to pretend to be asleep as the nursed cracked open the door and peeked inside. Seconds passed, then the door shut again as the nurse went away.

Luka let out a heavy breath and a whimper, the headphones still warm in her loose fingers underneath the pillow. Quietly she cried into her pillow, trying to make sense of what she had heard. When the pain was more manageable, she sat up slowly and wiped her eyes, then quickly stood, intending to conceal the headphones in the duffle bag. She stumbled on her way, falling hard to the ground, but dragged herself up. Her cell had gone missing after the concert, but she had to get to another, immediately. She had to make sure that Yukari was okay.

-x-

"Can we replicate this?" Those present at the dinner party oohed and aahed, all eyes on the servant dressed like an elaborate butler as he made his way around the table pouring coffee.

"It's genius! I've never seen technology of this level!"

"Is he good in bed?" A woman suggested with a flirtatious squint of her eyes, causing all the women present to giggle at the naughty suggestion.

"Where can I buy one?"

"Ladies and gentlemen, he is not for sale. He has feelings too, you know." Teruo Kurosawa explained gently, patting the male subject on the back. The subject stiffened, then straightened up from pouring his master's cup, and moved back into the shadows against the wall. His blue eyes were dull and void of emotion, but a shocking bright blue. His neon blonde hair was choppy and mussed in that sexy, come-hither sort of way, pulled into a low, small ponytail, styled purposefully with gel and only the best hair products. His suit was expensive, made by French tailors to fit the exact proportions of his body.

"Are you certain he's not a real human?"

"Positive." Teruo uttered with a dark smirk, gesturing to the quiet male standing just behind his right shoulder. "Len, introduce yourself."

The figure, Len, stepped forward and bowed low, careful not to spill a drop of coffee from the carafe in his gloved hands. As he rose, he spoke gently, his voice a handsome tenor that caused a hush to fall over the room.

"I am pleased to meet you. My name is Kagamine Len. I am a fully functioning android unit, designed to exhibit every possible human behavior with pristine exactness."

"And…?" Mr. Kurosawa prompted, sipping delicately from his coffee. He was ever so pleased to see the gaping stares on the faces of his dinner guests. He'd waited many months to play this card, many long months indeed.

"And I have a fully-functioning brain made of organic tissue."

The room erupted with gasps of awe and amazement, followed immediately by thick silence. Teruo Kurosawa looked around the room and saw dollar signs in the eyes of his mostly elderly dinner guests. He knew how to raise revenue for his medical games. This was merely another play.

He stood slowly and gestured to the robot beside him, smiling that handsome winning smile, the one that had won him world's second sexiest man, at his guests.

"Ladies and gentlemen: I present to you the fountain of youth."

Later that evening checks would be written, checks made out with a numerous amount of zeroes, all in the hopes that Teruo Kurosawa would continue to create such amazing technology so that they too might live forever, possibly transferring their brains into a handsome android body much like the Kagamine boy.

The only problem was that Kurosawa's guests had assumed he was responsible for such technology. Teruo hadn't created Len, he'd found him.

But he needed the money to figure out how to replicate him.


	6. Chapter 6

Based on the lyrics of "Just Be Friends", I really didn't intend for Luka's ex boy-toy to become the villain, honestly. It just sort of happened that way. And readers keep asking me about **Negitoro** , so I'll be upfront because that seems to be really popular around here. There is **Negitoro** in this fic, but it's not what you think. I hesitate to say anymore because as a writer, I abhor giving out spoilers to my own work.

If the only reason you're reading this is for **Negitoro** , though, this isn't the fic for you. I'm just warning you now so you don't waste your time. But if, however, you are enjoying my story, then please continue to enjoy! Patience is a virtue. 3

I also apologize for Miku's absence for a good chunk of this story. I've wanted her to remain mysterious. But continue to read, you'll find her in chapter six.

* * *

Chapter Six: Tattoos

Classical music blared through the underground floor of a large, three story medical building, reaching so far as to rattle the windows on the ground floor above. The source of the sound was a newly remodeled record player wired into a surround-sound theater system on the underground floor of the building. With speakers in every room and the volume turned to highest capacity, the violins screeched and the cellos moaned, and the building stood still among the anguish, a dot of passive violence on the top of the green, grassy hill it was built on.

Deep within that building on the underground floor, a lone figure bent over his work, hands moving slowly in time to the beat of the song. The music blared around him, ricocheting off of concrete walls and vibrating into the very earth's core, loud enough to harm a human eardrum if listened to for long intervals of time. The figure behaved as if the sound didn't bother him at all. In fact, he behaved almost as if he couldn't even hear it.

Kagamine Len sat on his knees in a pool of his own blood. It was strange looking for blood. It was quite translucent and not quite the right consistency, though it still managed to be red in color. It was all over the floor, swirling slowly into a drain in the center of the room, but not fast enough. Part of Len's job was to clean, and so he was, removing swabs of blood from the floor with a dirty rag, squeezing it into a bucket of soapy water.

He could still remember the masters' shouts of frustration and anger as his experiment had gone awry. Len remembered trying to tell master that he had an anti-tampering system that must be dismantled before one could go beneath the epidermis layer to look at what he housed inside in any extreme detail. The master, thinking himself a genius, had ignored him.

Len would have liked to have smirked, but all that filled him with what he was had been robbed. He paused mid-scrub, his hands missing a beat in the music, and his eyes drooped, suddenly downcast. He shifted onto his side, and lowered his face into his hand, a very human gesture. The music blared around him. But he could not hear it, not really. Hearing was different when you didn't feel it in your soul.

Len wasn't happy that as a robot he could still cry. Tears rolled down his cheeks, slowly one by one, glimmering gold in color. He wiped them away, leaving streaks of weak blood on his cheeks, a soft pink on the color of his artificial skin. With a long blink of his eyes the music shut off abruptly in the house, his wireless signal having communicated to the electronics to give it up.

Slowly he stood to his feet and walked to the line of television screens on the wall. He leaned forward and touched one of the screens, pinching the screen with his fingers to draw it in and cause the camera operated by the touch screen to zoom in. The subject of the camera was sleeping, curled up in a ball, on a simple cot. Len was slightly happy to see this. She rarely slept.

Accessing his internal clock, he realized that the master would be gone for many hours yet, according to his weekly schedule. He had time.

Quickly, before his loyalty enhancers could dissuade him from his decision, Len moved to the computer station in charge of the cell she was kept in, typing in the correct key codes to gain him access. One of the walls in the basement folded in on itself and opened, revealing a narrow hallway. Len turned and strode quickly down it, mentally recognizing his need for liquefying and charging. Due to the high blood loss, he needed to recuperate soon. He only had around forty minutes of charge time left before he'd crash.

But this was worth it.

Passing all the other doors, he made his way to the most important door and gently cracked it open, almost pleased with himself at his hacking skills that he'd gotten it open without setting off any alarms this time. Unaware that most normal beings would consider him creepy, he pushed himself into the doorway and stood in the crack, staring at the sleeping female on the bed. He watched her for what felt like hours, then slowly shifted into the room and shut the door just a crack behind him. The masters would be angry if she got out, and Len would be lost.

He took a timid seat on the floor beside her bed, leaning up against the mattress, never once tearing his neon blue eyes away from her beautiful sleeping face. Her hair, exactly the same neon yellow color as his, draped beautifully around her face, resting on top of her shoulders, rising and falling with every one of her breaths. Her body, slight and graceful, moved little but for that from her breathing, her small hands folded on her stomach. The look on her face was serene despite the ordeal she'd undergone here. It gave Len hope.

"Rin," He breathed quietly, the only name they allowed him to use for her, and steadily, steadily, steadily reached forward to brush one finger against her cheek. The sensations he felt when he touched were not the same, he knew from lost memories, but they were close enough. Her skin reminded him of the same sensation of silk or plush linen. He stroked her cheek again, blinking in surprise as she started to wake up.

Her small, soprano sigh sent Len's head into a tailspin of euphoria, but he began to recognize the warning signals going off in his system. He hadn't been face to face with her like this since before the-…

"Wh-who are you?" She whispered imploringly as she started to sit up.

Len's voice froze in his throat. It wasn't the sort of voice she'd want to hear anyway.

She sat up slowly and fixed her eyes on him, scratching her head and yawning. But Len could see the realization dawn on her as she began to recognize him. He felt a sense of horror, or a replication of it, as her eyes began to widen with the same emotion. His robotic heart fell out of his chest when she let out a wild scream.

"You! You work for him!"

Len tried to tell her no, he didn't. He'd never, ever hurt her. But he couldn't speak. He'd be too ashamed for her to hear his voice.

"I don't want to. Please, I don't want to-," She was beginning to babble. Len reached out to take her hand but she yanked it away, and quickly scurried from him onto the corner of the bed, covering her eyes and backing as far away from him as possible.

Now terrified himself, Len scrambled out of the room, slamming the door behind him and locking it quickly with the manual keypad, sealing out her cries in the sound proof room. Staring at the hard steel of the door before him, one single gold tear streaked down his cheek. He gave it a moment, out of pity, then wiped it away and resolved himself, leaving the hall to return to his task. He tried not to watch Rin trembling in fear in the corner of her room on the monitor, but quickly gave up and shut it off, unable to stand the fabricated guilt. He slowly moved through his cleaning tasks, then seated himself on the gurney and plugged in his power cords into his wrist, staring blankly at the blood red "02" on his upper arm. Rin's matched his, as did her looks, as did her voice, as did everything about her but her gender. But he was doomed to be less than perfect where she was concerned.

After securing his power source, he shut himself down into low power mode to allow his artificial body to go about making his version of blood. He dreamt of Rin in happier times. However short-lived those times had been, they had been perfect.

-x-

The other end of the telephone rang and rang with no answer. Luka hung up and called again for the thirteenth time. The same result occurred, and again, and again, and again. Luka left message after message, but gained zero results. Originally, when she'd called and gotten no reply, she'd told herself that it was merely because she'd hallucinated the sound of her sister's screams in the headphones earlier. She was going crazy, Yukari was home asleep. Her bedtime was about eight pm, anyway, and it was well past that.

Rationales had long given way after her umpteenth phone call. Yukari was in danger and she knew it. Her sister should have answered the phone by now.

Heaving a heavy, exasperated sigh, Luka leaned down on the sitting chair in the waiting room, keeping her eyes fixed on the phone before her. She wasn't sure how long she stared at that phone, wishing and hoping that it would ring. She could feel the indention of the headphones in the seam of her pants underneath the floral shawl she'd been wearing earlier. She was afraid to, but she wondered if she returned the phones to her head if she'd possibly hear more from Yukari. She was terrified of what exactly she might hear.

Luka was startled out of her private thoughts by a gentle clearing of a throat. She turned to see the night-watch nurse standing in the doorway, a slip of paper in her hand. She crossed the room quickly, her curvy body jostling with the urgent manner in which she walked. Stuffing the paper toward Luka, she nodded toward it with a wave of her eyebrows.

"You've been receiving a call in the other room. It couldn't get through because you kept calling out." The nurse uttered, her tone almost judgmental. When Luka took the paper from her, the nurse went on. "She said to call her back at this phone number."

"Thank you." Luka uttered gently, watching as the nurse bustled out of the room without another word. She couldn't place it, but she had been imagining that the medical staff at this hospital didn't like her since she'd been there. Examining the phone number scrawled across the paper, Luka quickly dialed it, hoping and praying it would be her sister who picked up the other line.

The line dialed slowly before clicking on in answer. The person on the other end of the line said nothing.

"Hello." Luka offered timidly, studying the empty sounds for any possible breath or sneeze or whisper that would sound like her sister. The line was quiet. "Yukari? Is this you?"

"Yukari is in danger."

Luka's body chilled over entirely as if she'd plunged into the oceans of Antarctica. The voice, not Yukari's, was recognizable to Luka. It was the same voice that had threatened her before the concert, the voice of the female who'd caused all of this to happen.

She swallowed, her hand shaking against the phone so that it rattled with a clickety-clack sound against the ring on her finger.

"H-Hatsune Miku." She managed, feeling a deep, irritable anger begin to well up within her.

A soft, cunning laugh was uttered before Miku replied. "That is what they call me. I know it isn't my real name."

Luka momentarily thought to ask her what she meant, but immediately brought herself back to the moment. She had to make sure Yukari was okay.

"What did you do to my sister? Why isn't she answering my calls?"

"I didn't do anything," Miku scoffed, sounding utterly offended. "This is your fault. It's always your fault. And I don't even know what that means yet."

She never made any sense to Luka. Rolling her eyes, she leaned forward until the wooden edge of the table pressed into her ribs, a sharp reminder that she was awake and alive in this vivid nightmare. "How is this my fault? You made me wear the headphones."

"Not the phones." She paused, her voice irritable. "You went back to that guy. The 'Friend' of yours. You need to get out of that hospital. And you need to wear your phones. Stop taking them off."

A memory from earlier that day flooded her mind: Teruo Kurosawa asking about the headphones and looking quite suspicious. Luka swallowed drily.

"I don't-,"

"How are the headaches?"

Luka's breath caught in her throat and she waited, almost as if the other girl hadn't quite finished what she had been saying. But there was silence on the other line. Luka tried to speak but only managed a soft sigh, rubbing her forehead with the palm of her hand. Even then her head was splitting in pain. The temptation to ask this girl, Miku, what was happening to her was overwhelming, but she kept thinking about that scream from Yukari.

"I-,"

"Listen. Wear the phones, get yourself out of there. Meet me at the ramen shop on the corner of 4th and S. Sakura St. in two hours. I'll help you find your sister."

The line clicked and hung up, bringing an irresponsible curse burning out of Luka as she herself slammed down the phone then picked it up to dial again. The phone rang and rang this time, no one picking up. Slamming the phone down again, just to satisfy herself, she pressed her palms into her eyes and massaged slowly, feeling the rim of the headphones digging into her soft thigh flesh from their concealed place in her pants.

She'd meet this Miku when asked, but she refused to put the phones on again. She refused despite the itching, urging instinct she felt in every bone of her body to put them on. It was time for some answers, and Luka knew that Miku had them. It was why she'd been searching for her since the night of the concert, and had Teruo look her up. It was lucky Miku happened to seem to know something about Yukari as well.

-x-

It hadn't been hard to leave the hospital. Luka would be a liar if she didn't admit that Miku's ominous warning of "you have to leave that hospital" had freaked her out a little. Knowing that Teruo and she were no longer lovers, and had recently had their "friendly" falling out, didn't encourage things. She didn't trust him anymore, not fully. Unfortunately, that's what a break up would do to you.

Now Luka sat in the warmth of a ramen shop, sipping from a cool glass of water to attempt to soothe her aching brain. The blood was throbbing in her skull, so powerfully angry and in pain that she heard the sound in her ears, a low, dull _thrum, thrum, thrum._ The smell of the ramen shop made her stomach growl, increasing the sensation of pain. She hadn't eaten in hours, but now wasn't the time. Her appetite was non-existent even if her body insisted on food.

Examining every customer that came in, Luka stiffened every time she heard the bell ding on the door handle. Three times in a row it'd been nobody, a couple, an old man, a group of female friends from an office just getting off of work for a drink and a meal. But shortly after that last group arrived, Luka was rewarded for waiting. Hatsune Miku walked into the shop, looking quite different than she'd looked when Luka had first met her.

Her appearance was cleaned up, the scrapes on her face and arms gone, her hair washed and brushed and pulled up into two very long, aqua-blue pigtails, the ends curling naturally at the tips. She'd dressed herself in a chunky cable-knit sweater and baby blue jeans, black winter boots covering up to her knee. Luka surprisingly admitted to herself that the female looked normal, even cute, as she watched her come to the table. Nerves electrified as she realized the two of them were drawing attention, their bright, neon colored hair bringing eyes to the back of the room as Miku neared her table.

"Megurine Luka…?"

Hearing her name from some of the ramen shop customers, she cleared her throat and sank lower in her seat, praying no one in the shop came over to ask for an autograph. Miku slid into the seat opposite her the moment she reached the table, fearless and uncaring that she was drawing attention.

Neither of the girls said a word to one another. A waitress came over, fumbling with her notebook. She obviously recognized Luka, the way she stammered her greeting and wouldn't meet her gaze.

"C-can I get y-you… anything?"

"Two special bowls, please." Miku uttered quietly, refusing to look at the waitress. The waitress nodded and quickly made her way back to the kitchen.

"You couldn't have chosen a less conspicuous place, could you?" Luka hissed quietly, nervously looking around the room. She didn't want to be recognized with a convict so soon after the bad publicity of the concert.

Miku snorted, laying her hands flat on the table.

"Not everything is about you, princess." She muttered coldly. "I'm laying low for the moment."

Her first words had sounded remarkably familiar to Luka. She'd heard them before, from many people. For some reason, they bothered her more now. She felt… guilty.

"Why aren't you wearing your headphones?" She asked, eying the bare, wavy pink head before her.

Luka unconsciously stroked them beneath the shawl, starting to feel uncomfortable toting them around everywhere like this.

"You think I'd wear them around normal people? What if something happens again, like at the concert?"

Miku actually laughed, a mocking tone in her voice. Luka wondered what the girl had to be so bitter about, but decided against asking. There was a reason she was here.

"You know where Yukari is?"

Miku pulled a bottle of sauce from the corner of the table, rolling it slowly in her hand. She stared at it, almost mesmerized, then slowly reached up and pulled the sleeve of her sweater until the neck hole stretched down over her shoulder, exposing her upper arm. A bright red "01" was tattooed darkly there, looking quite permanent.

"Do you know what this is?"

Luka studied it, an itching memory tickling the back of her mind. She shook her head, halfway lying and halfway telling the truth.

"A tattoo? Why does it matter? Where is Yukari?"

"Move the shawl. From your left arm, now." Miku demanded, sliding the sauce bottle back to its place without making eye contact with Luka.

The rosy-haired female hesitated, feeling heavy irritation at the games this girl was playing. She should have known better than to come out here with a girl from a loony bin, no matter how much information she might know.

Not hiding her irritation, she shoved the shawl down her arm to expose it in her pink tank top, rolling her shoulder forward and gesturing to the blank, pale skin there.

"This? I don't have a tattoo. What is this about?"

The next scenario that happened could have ended in screams and bloodshed, but it moved too fast for Luka to reply. Miku, grabbing a knife from the set of cutlery on the table, leaned forward and slashed at Luka's arm, dropping the knife to clatter on the table and wrapping her hands around Luka's arm, raising it up to show her.

Shaking and holding back a scream that had not yet begun to leave her, Luka stared down at her arm, expecting to see blood. Instead, what she saw gave her the ever-living creeps. Where the knife had slashed were two deep peels of what appeared to be skin, looking papery thin and rubbery, pulling back from an open "wound". Luka shook her arm out of Miku's grasp and prodded at the false skin, shuddering when it began to roll away. She peeled it slowly, horrified to find it revealing a blood-red tattoo beneath the false skin. As it came away, the tattoo appeared in its entirety, a solid red, permanent "03".

Her hands now shaking, Luka slowly pulled the shawl up over her shoulder again and clutched one hand tight to keep it closed, concealing the other beneath the table to shake out of sight upon her knee. Her eyes made contact with Miku's across the table, seeing pity and something that almost looked like kindness in the eyes of the other girl. She was afraid to speak, and thankful when Miku offered a solution without being asked.

"You already knew: the hair, my intel with the headphones. But now it's certain. You're one of me."

"One of you?" Despite the awkward grammar usage, Luka thought that was a bit arrogant of Miku to say. "What if you're one of me- I mean… **my** kind?"

"I'm number '01', remember? The first." Miku said with a hint of mocking pride in her voice.

Luka was afraid to ask this next question, but it bumbled out of her mouth before her brain could say no. "And what are you?"

"We had names before. But without my memories I don't know what they are. Your friend, one of the founders of the program, named our race Vocaloids."

Luka could hardly believe what she was hearing. Blinking rapidly, which caused another lightning bolt of pain in her stressed out brain, leaned back in her seat and ran a hand over that spot on her arm. Remnants of fake skin itched and tickled beneath the shawl, reminding her just how much she didn't really know about her life.

"The memories are in the headphones; basically a computer that works in tandem with our brains. They took mine away as soon as they found me. I was very young. My memories are in fragments now." Miku paused, gesturing to her arm where the tattoo was located. "They branded us, their experiments, to keep track of the data they harvested."

Miku paused in the middle of her tale to give Luka a hard look, her lips pressing thin and her hand turning into a tightly clenched fist on the table. She silently stared Luka down, trying to control her emotions before relaying this next part of news.

"You got out early. Kotaro Yuzuki took pity on you. You manipulated him, and he wiped your memories, and Yukari's memories, and he took you away and kept you hidden."

Miku's eyes were hiding a soft, controlled sense of rage. Luka wasn't sure she could blame her, but she didn't' remember anything of what Miku was telling her. But with every new story, the pain in her brain increased, as if her mind was attempting to over compensate for remembering. She thought to the headphones concealed on her person and wished she had time alone to put them on. She wondered that, if what Miku was saying was true, the headphones might return her memories to her of all of these events.

"Of course, true to your nature you couldn't be concealed and you became a pop star. I'm sure that made life difficult for Kotaro, to hide Yukari from the company. Dating Teruo was a smooth move. I'm sure he kept you safe. It would have been quite obvious to the company that you were the lost pink-haired Vocaloid that got away."

Unsure of all of this, Luka took the insults without saying a word. How could she defend herself when she didn't know if it were true or not? Her throat constricting, she leaned forward and whispered, unable to speak louder than that.

"Are you saying that Teruo, my ex, is in this mysterious 'Vocaloid experiment' company?"

Miku narrowed her eyes in scorn at the other female, forgetting that Luka couldn't remember for a moment. "He's the son of the founder. Of course he is."

The tension in the air was interrupted by the waitress bringing the ramen bowls with a cheerful smile. The spoon rattled in the bowls as she lay them down, bowing deeply to Luka and hesitating before moving back to her post.

"Excuse me, but… when I bring the bill, could I get an autograph?"

Luka waved her hand and agreed impatiently, wanting the girl to be gone. Miku was already tucking into her food, slurping the noodles like she hadn't eaten in weeks. Luka couldn't stomach the idea of eating.

"Yes, I will. Thank you for your service." She uttered quickly, and the girl, surprised at the rude tone, turned slowly away as if her dreams had been dashed against the rocks.

"I think you've been breaking hearts for a long time." Miku muttered between sips of broth from her spoon; a passive aggressive tone laced her voice.

Luka ignored that comment and reached forward, taking the spoon out of Miku's hand. She laid it down on the table more forcefully than she should have, and folded her hands gently on the table against the soup bowl. The warmth of the broth gave her courage.

"Where is Yukari? It's the one part of your tale you haven't told."

"Teruo has her."

Luka's stomach dropped out of her. Her ears began to burn hot with anger, her heart rolling in anguish within her chest. She began to feel incredibly foolish, irritated that she'd trusted this girl and come to meet her. True, she'd had some proof to back up her bizarre story about "Vocaloids" and whatever, but this was far-fetched. Teruo would not have access to Yukari and not have told her. It was ridiculous.

"I dated Teruo Kurosawa for three years. He knew I had a sister. Why would he take her?"

"Because of the concert. He was concealing Yukari for a long time, because he knew you cared about her and he cared about you. His father didn't like any of his Vocaloids being gone. But Teruo convinced him that he'd fallen desperately in love with you and you didn't know where Yukari was. He helped Kotaro hide this whole time you were out in the open, frolicking about happily and enjoying your freedom and glory."

Miku went back to her soup, speaking in between bites and slurps of noodles. She was clearly enjoying this. "But then you broke up with Teruo publicly. He didn't have an excuse to hide Yukari from his father anymore. When you had your little stunt on stage, it scared Kotaro out of hiding and Teruo's father caught up with him."

Miku paused here in the telling of her tale, her lips pulling into a small frown. It seemed, despite her glee at making Luka feel horrendous about herself, she wasn't relishing having to impart this next bit of news.

"Teruo's father sent him to bring back his property. You were easy to talk back into the hospital. But Kotaro was fighting to keep your sister." Miku swallowed, then set down her spoon, folding her hands in her lap and looking down at the floor. "Kotaro is dead. Teruo's men killed him and took back what 'rightfully' belonged to his father."

There were no words to explain the anguish Luka felt at hearing this news. Her body seemed to freeze in complete shock. Her blood stilled, her heart momentarily stopped, time froze in and around her. And as the world around her began to break, Luka felt a hot tear slip down her cheek.

"No, you're lying." She uttered angrily. "The little stunt-… that was YOUR fault. Kotaro isn't dead. You're lying to me. You're crazy."

Miku didn't move, merely watched the denial occurring before her.

"Teruo wouldn't… he wouldn't lie to me."

"I can prove it. There are others." Miku uttered gently, seeming to have lost all interest in making the pink-haired woman suffer any further. "There's a number '02', and many more. Teruo really wants me back. You could turn me in-,"

"Maybe I will!" Luka half-shouted, catching herself when some of the already suspicious ramen shop workers looked her way. She swallowed and leaned forward to press her face into her hands, propped up by her elbows on the table.

"You could turn me in," Miku went on patiently, trying to ignore the desire to reach across and take the other girls hand. "or you could help me. Go home, put on your headphones and wear them for at least five hours. Let the download complete, stop causing your brain such pain. When you remember, then you can help me find mine. If I can get my hands on my-,"

She paused, suddenly alert, and turned to face the door of the ramen shop. Red and blue lights flashed through the glass of the shop-front windows. Miku cursed angrily under her breath and stood abruptly, sloshing broth over the table.

"I'll contact you." She muttered under her breath, and immediately took off in a dash for the door.

Megurine Luka stood and called after her, her soul a lost ship tossed about on a storm of emotion she wondered she'd ever be free of. Catching a last glimpse of teal-hair whipping out of the door, she scrambled out of her seat and stumbled past a couple toward the door, tripping out and into the street, catching her balance on a light pole.

The entire road had been cordoned off with caution tape, and police cars blocked either end of the road. Hatsune Miku stood, proud and defiant, in the middle of the street, staring down the blaring headlights with narrowed, anger-rimmed eyes. Luka gasped and tried to call out her name, realizing that the entire time they'd been conversing this must have been set up.

As armed police officers slowly inched from behind their car barricade toward Miku, Luka darted forward, crying for her to look out.

"Miku-! Miku, run!" She screamed, not questioning her instinct to help, but obeying it entirely, struggling when three men caught up to her and wrapped their arms around her, pulling her back toward the curb of the street.

Miku turned to face Luka, raising her hands straight up in the air to surrender, and gave Luka the most unadulterated look of pure loathing. Luka's heart hammered in her chest, panicked, and she fought against the guards, realizing how this must look. She hadn't even been given the choice: believe the teal-haired girl or turn her in? It had been robbed from her.

"Thank you for your help, Luka." A gentle voice spoke behind her.

Luka gradually calmed and the guards backed away, allowing her to turn and face Teruo Kurosawa as he approached her.

"You helped me find my patient." And he smiled that genuinely beautiful smile.


	7. Chapter 7

I want to get back into naming a song for each chapter, but no one's been happy enough to sing lately in this story. I have some songs saved to assist me in writing chapters I've already planned later on, but this is pretty much a "silent Vocaloid" period. If you think of a song that seems to fit this chapter, or any other song-less chapters, please let me know!

Thank you to all of my wonderful reviewers. I live to read your words. They encourage me to continue on. Thank you, a thousand times, thank you.

* * *

Chapter Seven: Our Only Hope

Life changes rapidly on people. One moment your house is standing tall, the next an earthquake has hit and it's flattened into irreversible damage the likes of which you'd never imagined, or fire has consumed with the passionate voracity of a scorned lover, a hurricane sought vengeance for joy you wouldn't share with nature. But sometimes life changes in the minutest ways, perhaps in the look of the eye of a person who thought that you'd betrayed them.

Megurine Luka felt that minute change almost as surely as if she could feel the earth rotating on its axis. This right here, this was a turning point, a moment of no return. She'd either become a better or a worse person for it. And she was entirely sure that her ex-boyfriend, Teruo Kurosawa, had become worse.

Clenching her fists slowly, flexing her fingers in surprise to feel a current of strong loathing pulsating through her senses, she resisted the urge to lash out physically, knowing she had to keep her cool if she were to talk her, or Miku's, way out of the situation. She had to play the pretty fool, or else Teruo would get suspicious. If Miku was right about all of this, and so far, judging by Teruo's behavior, it seemed that she was, Luka knew she was in danger, too, now that Kotaro was dead and could no longer protect her.

"You helped me find my patient," He'd said. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. I only came to visit her to get answers about the concert." Luka muttered quietly, avoiding eye contact with Teruo. Instead she watched the police officers bind Miku in handcuffs and help her into the back seat of a cop car. The teal-haired girl was pointedly ignoring her.

"I'm sure." Teruo uttered on tense lips, sounding like he didn't believe her. "And what did she tell you?"

Luka didn't hesitate. Hesitating would make her look guilty. "A bunch of bull crap, to be honest. She tried to say…" Here Luka acted like she was really confused, scrunching her nose up and narrowing her eyebrows, remembering it was a look Teruo used to find cute on her. "I don't even know. It was crazy though. The sound equipment clearly malfunctioned at the concert and the drunk fans got pissed off. That's all that happened."

Luka raised her soft blue eyes to meet Teruo's, relieved to find acceptance of her story in his hazel ones. He nodded, turning to look toward the cop cars that were starting to pull away, scratching his nose and sighing.

"You do have that effect on people."

Trying not to feel insulted at his word choice, Luka was even more relieved to see a crowd of people forming at both ends of the cordoned off areas of the street. She could always use a crowd to her advantage. And this was how she was going to stay out of Teruo's hospital, at least for a little while longer.

"I'm feeling better now." She lied cheerfully, tucking a strand of hair behind her ears. "I think it's time to do some damage control for my image."

She strolled forward and took a step off of the curb, but Teruo reached out sharply and grabbed hold of her arm. Luka felt the shawl begin to slip and quickly grabbed it, pulling it up over her shoulder again. If Teruo spotted that blood red '03', the game would be up.

"What?" She blinked ignorantly up at him.

Her heart speeding 90 miles a minute, she almost sighed in relief when she heard the crowd begin to mumble her name. They had recognized her. Teruo had to let her go now. While Miku had considered Luka's fame something to make her family a target, Luka realized her fame was now what would keep her safe. Teruo and his father couldn't come after her as long as she was still the world's number one pop princess. Slowly she pulled her arm out of his hand and gave him a gentle smile.

"I think they're taking pictures. Try not to touch me, or people will think we're back together. Okay?" She uttered firmly, 100% pop diva. Teruo's eyes flashed with annoyance but he did nothing, merely watched her turn on her heels and head straight for the crowd. Reporters had arrived by then, and cameras were rolling, flashes just starting to go off, people video-taping with their cell phones.

Luka reached the edge of the cordoned area and smiled sweetly at the crowd, snuggling tighter into her shawl. She didn't even have to say a word; the questions immediately began pouring forth from their eager mouths.

"Ms. Luka, can you tell us what went on this evening?"

"What about at the concert? Is it true what your agency's saying about the event?"

"Are you and Teruo Kurosawa getting back together?"

"Who was the girl with the pig-tails?"

Luka waited a good time to get a plethora of questions out. It was a technique taught to her by her manager, Todd Bulinsky, meant to give her control over which questions she answered and did not answer. If she chose one question out of five, no one would notice she hadn't answered the others. Calmly raising her hand, she quieted the crowd and carefully chose her answers, posing and smiling beautifully for the camera.

"The concert was an accident. We had a sound issue and some of the crowd members got angry." She calmly explained. She knew it wasn't the truth, and she still wanted to know the truth herself, but this answer is what Todd Bulinsky would have given were he awake and healthy right now, not bed-ridden in a coma. "You know how some people get at concerts." She laughed sweetly, rolling her eyes and shaking her shoulders.

The crowd laughed with her, eating her up. She was still their favorite, even with bad publicity.

"As to what happened this evening,-" Here she paused, not quite sure how to answer this question without causing further alarm. It was best to act cute and beg forgiveness. "Well, I scared Teruo, to be honest. I left the hospital to meet a friend. She's recently been released from the hospital herself, for unfortunate mental issues, and he doesn't trust her. He called in an entire black ops squad to a ramen shop just to make sure I was safe."

The crowd laughed much harder at this, believing it completely even though it was a lie. Luka imagined Teruo's eyes burning into the back of her skull. But when she turned to glance his direction, he wasn't even looking at her. He was speaking to the police officers, who were writing something down quickly. The fact that he hadn't left yet alarmed her. She hoped he wasn't waiting to insist that she go back to the hospital.

"So the girl he loaded away? Did she hurt you?"

"No! It's just Teruo being safe. Seriously, it's all good. She'll be released soon." Luka spoke louder, angling herself to make sure the words would float toward Teruo and he'd be able to hear them, clear as day. "I'll make certain of that."

"Are you and Teruo back together?" Interrupted a younger reporter.

The pop princess offered a soft, sad smile, and then slowly shook her head, making sure to keep an optimistic expression. "Unfortunately the passion between us has cooled. We both agree at this point it's better to be friends. But…I've been discharged from the hospital and I'm going back home this evening. It's all been worked out. I'm returning to work!"

At that moment Teruo approached, his hands in his suit jacket pockets. He watched Luka with an expression only she could see in his eyes, impressed annoyance.

"What are you telling them?" He asked softly, a glint in his eyes.

"Teruo, are you still in love with Megurine Luka?"

Luka wanted to curse the reporters for giving him a controlling option. She immediately cooled her expression and looked away, making it obvious to the world despite how Teruo felt, she wouldn't have any of it. Behind her, she heard Teruo's voice hitch as he took a slow breath in.

"It's unrequited, but always."

The rosy-haired girl was not prone to violence, but in that moment she wanted to punch him in the throat. Everything was tentative here, and she knew that he was lying. But a gorgeous, lovesick man brokenhearted by a harsh, cold-hearted pop diva was a sob story to the media. It was the one way to make her look bad. It was the one way for her to lose popularity so his father could rein her back in. Luka had to stop this, fast.

"He loves me, which is why he's setting me free." Luka gained a faraway look in her eye, and turned slowly toward her ex-boyfriend, raising her hand to gently brush across his cheek. "I wish I could have him, but I'd only end up ruining him in the end. I pass him on to any worthy lady who can cherish him more than me."

Teruo's eyes, cold, narrowed on her as he leaned in close, his lips brushing against the cusp of her ear.

"You know, don't you? About the Vocaloid project…?" He whispered, then took her hand in his and held it to his chest. The crowd was snapping pictures like wildfire. Luka's heart hammered, not out of spontaneous romance, but ridiculous fear.

"Fine. If you really must leave… we'll enjoy playing this game, you and I." He uttered dangerously, only so she could hear, then raised her hand and brushed his lips smooth against her knuckles, lowering her hand and backing completely away from her.

"Good night, all." He grinned his second sexiest grin at the reporters and turned on his heels to march away, stepping into a sleek black car waiting for him at the curb past the cordoned area. The moment the door slammed shut his driver took off, and just like that, Teruo Kurosawa was gone.

At least for the moment.

Luka breathed easily, not even minding having to be on "clean-up" duty with the media based on his stupid little kiss and hand-holding gestures. With her charm and beauty she'd managed to convince the crowd that nothing was going on between them, really, they'd just always been that close, and finally one of the police officers was offering her a ride.

Luka declined it, however, not trusting that the cop wasn't working with Teruo and attempting to get her back in his clutches. Instead, she waved goodbye to the reporters and made her way down the street until the crowd thinned, and hailed a taxi cab. Pulling her shawl tighter about her, she stepped inside and clacked the door shut behind her, allowing herself to shudder in the emotion she'd been holding back the entire time.

She had no idea what to do next.

-x-

The morning rose to songbirds and sunbeams. Kagamine Len did not get to enjoy them. He rose from his bed, unplugged his charging cables, and dressed himself in his uniform for the day, a pair of navy blue hospital scrubs, then headed to the main room of the underground facility he spent most of his time in. His low ponytail was messy and thrown up today, but somehow he managed to remain perfectly gorgeous. It was the perfect imperfections about him that allowed him to do so. He didn't even notice, nor did he care.

Sliding his key card into the purposed slot, the main doors of the underground facility opened and shut behind him as soon as he'd stepped through. He then had to access another door, and once through that one, take a special security elevator up to the ground floor of the facility. All of this required special clearance, and all of this he possessed. But Len was not allowed to go above to the ground floor without dressing like a nurse, because the facility above was a hospital.

The elevator doors slid open and Len stepped through, his face passive and emotionless, like always. Sunlight streamed through bright windows, nurses bustled to and fro, doctors hurried by with clipboards. The smell of coffee alerted Len's fabricated sensors and he sighed. Even though he did not need to drink coffee, it was one of the more peculiar sensations that Len actually enjoyed. He followed the smell of it down the hallway and to the cafeteria, briefly pondering what it would be like to be outside, on a cold day, and drink a sip of steaming hot coffee. He allowed himself to wildly imagine, for a moment, the burning sensation seeping down his throat and pooling in his belly. But Len didn't have a belly anymore. He had a sack that could be emptied if social occasion caused him to need to eat food so as not to offend.

"Morning, Len." A young nurse cooed to him as he passed by. She pinched his cheek and winked flirtatiously at him before skipping away, heading off to fulfill her duties.

Len rubbed uncomfortably at the spot that she'd pinched, wondering if someone did that enough if his fabricated skin would wrinkle. He knew better than that though. It was why girls like her thought they could treat him like a middle-schooler. He would forever look young, like some kind of vampire in a romance novel.

An image of Len poised over Rin's bed in the night, his arms around her, teeth heading for her throat, both of them dressed like some sort of gothic romance couple, flashed into his mind. His robotic sensors told his cheeks to blush, and they did, while Len began to torment himself in his mind for remembering that he'd basically done that to her in the night. He wasn't supposed to talk to her, it wasn't allowed. And then he'd tried and he'd ended up freaking her out.

"Lookin' good, Len." One of the janitors called to him as he walked by. He smiled half-heartedly and waved robotically, not even trying to look human as he hurried stiffly along. His mind was in many different places today.

Finally reaching the cafeteria, he bowed deeply to the cafeteria lady and requested in a gentle tone of voice where he could pick up "the day's rations". She smiled and pressed an extra sweet bun into his hand, then gestured to the cart waiting, pre-loaded, by the door.

"There you are, sweetheart. I made those buns fresh this morning. That one's for you and your hard work."

"Thank you." Len uttered politely, hurrying to the cart. He dropped the paper bag she'd given him on top and pushed the cart as fast as he could into the hallway. He was itching to get back to the silence of the underground lab, not enjoying all the attention today.

Managing to make it back to the elevator without more than two or three uncomfortable social encounters, Len swiped his key card and rode the elevator down with supreme patience. The cart was always hard to maneuver with the double doors. With some difficulty, pausing and swiping the card two or three times, he managed to squeeze the cart inside.

His internal clock told him the masters would be arriving in half an hour.

Every day it was Len's job to feed the patients. He'd roll the cart down the hallway and slide bagged meals under a tiny slat in the bottom of the iron door. But today he didn't have enough meals. He stared at the monitor screens after counting up the bags, realizing that he was two short.

On the monitor, two more cell blocks had appeared, with two more individuals inside. One he'd never seen before. She seemed to be a bit younger than him. She was smaller, and showed little fear, though she seemed exhausted. He wasn't surprised to see her hair was the color of summer lilacs, a beautiful lavender. All the Vocaloid project children had strange hair.

The second cell block caused Len to pause for a very long time. His mind emptied as he wondered how to comprehend this new information he'd gathered. His mind warred with him and told him to panic and freak out, while the logic of his computing systems told him to remain calm and inspect the situation. He recognized the girl in the second block. There was a small sticky note on the monitor that read simply in all caps: STARVE.

The cart rattled violently, one wheel squeaking in protest, as Len hustled down the hall to the end. Allowing the cart to slow to a roll on its own, it bounced off of the wall at the end as he threw himself down on the floor and peered under the meal flap into the room.

"Miku!" He hissed under his breath, waving a hand under the flap.

Hatsune Miku lay like a broken doll on her thin, prison-quality cot. One of her pigtails had fallen down like she'd been in a fight and someone had gone dirty and yanked on her hair. Blood stained her lip, and one of her eyes was swollen and bruised. Slowly, blinking as if she were a computer coming to life, she lifted her head, smiling a genuinely sweet smile to see the face she saw underneath the food flap. A second later she winced from smiling so wide, and lapped at the wound on her lip with her tongue, trying her best to sit up.

"Oh, I knew this would happen." Len breathed quietly, taking in the state she was in. "I told you not to leave."

"Did they ever find out you helped me?" Miku managed, sliding her feet slowly to the floor.

Len answered "yes" in his head. He told Miku, in his head, that they'd punished him for it by taking the only thing that meant anything to him away: Rin. But Len didn't have the heart to tell Miku that. So he didn't.

"No. They don't want me to give you any food, though. You're on STARVE watch."

That didn't seem to bother Miku. She limped slowly toward the door then lowered herself, taking ages to do so, to the concrete floor, grunting occasionally in pain. Laying her cheek on the cool ground, she reached out and grazed Len's fingers with her own.

"I found her."

Len smiled. Miku noted that Len's smiles never reached his eyes anymore.

"Is she beautiful?"

"I don't understand you." Miku grumbled, rolling quickly onto her back and grunting when a jolt of pain went through her spine. "How can you be charmed by her, too? You should be the least susceptible of all of us."

Len didn't answer. He wasn't thinking about that. If he thought too hard about the reason why he did things, then his brain would hurt. His headphones didn't connect to him the same way they did to the others, but they connected just the same. He remembered more about their previous lives than any of the others in the Vocaloid project, but some things were still off limits.

"I remember her being beautiful." Was all he said.

Miku felt guilty that Len now sounded sad, when he'd been so happy to see her. They'd formed a very specific friendship, she and he, since they'd been stuck in that facility together for nine years. Miku was the only one of the Vocaloid Project that managed to stay relatively sane after all the experiments they'd been put through. The masters couldn't do it to Len, either, because he was an android and his body didn't react the same way to being denied access to his "true self". Instead they'd put him to work and treated him like a slave. Neither was complaining, though, because it meant Len could be free to come talk to her if he wished.

Many times Miku had tried to convince Len to leave. But Len wouldn't leave Rin. What annoyed Miku about that was that Len couldn't even remember why he wanted to stay with Rin. But his loyalty was something that even the masters couldn't shut off inside of him, not that they'd want to. They used her to convince Len to do whatever they wanted.

"Regardless…" Miku huffed, laying an arm over her eyes to keep the blaring lights of the ceiling out of reach. "She has her headphones. I think she'll wear them now… If she isn't a traitor, maybe she can save us."

"Would she want to save you?" Len muttered cryptically.

Miku turned to gaze at him quizzically, her face hurting when she naturally tried to raise an eyebrow at him. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know what I mean." Len answered honestly.

Miku, feeling sorry for Len and not wanting it to show in her eyes, turned her gaze back to bury it beneath her arm once more.

"Did you find out where they are?" She asked breathlessly. It was always the same question, and Len never had to ask what she meant by "they". "They" were what all of them sought, even though they didn't know it. "They" were what would free them from their bondage. "They" were the key.

"I know where. But I'll need her help."

Miku cursed beneath her breath.

"Then it's true." She muttered hopelessly, one single tear escaping from the corner of her eye. "All of our hopes rest in her."

"I hope she will not betray you again." Len uttered, still cryptic.

Miku didn't even ask what he meant then. She knew it was an echo of a memory he once had, rolling around somewhere in that computer DNA of his. Once she had her headphones she would know all, and Len wouldn't seem so crazy anymore. Once she had her headphones, she'd be powerful enough to seek revenge and kill all those that had tormented her people for years. Hopefully Megurine Luka, spoiled pop princess, would do her part. Miku hoped and prayed she wouldn't turn out to be a disappointment as her instinctual fears wanted her to believe.

-x-

The house echoed back stiffly as Luka dropped her duffle bag on the wooden floor. Standing completely still, there was absolutely no other sound to listen to in the silence of Kotaro's house. It crept up on her, accusing her wordlessly. " _Murderer",_ it seemed to whisper.

Luka rubbed a hand over her eyes, trying to control the tears falling on her face. Her shawl was abandoned on the floor like a surrendered flag in war, that blood red '03' displayed shamefully on her arm, her headphones in her left hand. Afraid to turn any of the lights on, but also afraid to turn them off, Luka stood stock still in the foyer only in her socks, remembering the ghostly echo of her sister picking apart hideous tunes on a guitar, the sound of the television and Kotaro's coarse cough. It occurred to her that she didn't have to take off her shoes anymore, since Kotaro wasn't around to complain that her American ways would drag dirt into the house. But still, out of respect, she'd removed them at the door.

Shuffling slowly forward, she slumped down in the living area against the table, seated on her knees. The remote controller lay in a pool of light from the moon on the table before her. She lifted it slowly in her hand and clicked it on, unable to bear the silence of the house and it's accusations that she was the reason it was so quiet.

The news report was like a blessing to Luka's ears. Curling her arms up and hiding her head in the nook they made, she listened to the various stories, relieved to hear the one she'd shared outside the ramen shop had delivered exactly as she'd wanted it to. The public knew Luka was planning on coming back to work. Now, if she mysteriously disappeared, the public would want to know. Teruo and his father couldn't get away with it.

Luka raised her head and peered through the blur of tears at the television screen. Searching the room next, her eyes landed on her sisters' guitar discarded carelessly in the corner of the room. A vase had been knocked off of the shelf there and lay in broken pieces on the floor. Her adopted father and sister had left urgently.

Kotaro had left quickly to hasten to his death.

"I'm sorry…" Luka breathed aloud, knowing she was speaking only to herself and a deaf house.

Hands trembling, her brain splitting in two from the pain, Luka slowly raised those headphones. They clicked into place behind her ears, and she closed her eyes, laying back on the floor to allow them to take her on whatever journey they would. With that notion alone, Luka accepted the fate of her new life. And as she faded into fitful sleep, the headphones synchronizing with her thoughts in her skull, she felt truly peaceful for the first time in a very, very, very long time.


	8. Chapter 8

So, I must apologize for my rather long absence from this story. I have quite the demanding job in the real world, and it got very busy there for a while, so much in fact that I found it nearly impossible to write. I also hit a bit of a writers block wall in which way I wanted to carry this story for now. I managed to squeeze out this chapter, and I believe it will take me where I need it to go, even if I'm not too happy with it quite yet, either.

Regardless, I OWE this to you, my faithful readers, for taking so bloody long to update when I'd gotten you used to almost two chapters a week. I promise I will finish this story. I have so much more to reveal, and so much more fun to have with these characters, I will not be giving up any time soon. We're almost to summer anyway, and I'll have loads of free time then. If you're enjoying this story, please stay on this ride with me. I will not let you down!

Thank you for reading faithfully.

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Chapter Eight: Two Persons- One Body

 _The musical sound of water was everywhere. It filled all existence with its' bubbling, gurgling laughter, drawing attention to every passerby. None could withstand its' charm, not even the goddess of charm herself. Drawn like a moth to a flame, she tiptoed barefoot in the grass, relishing at the cool touch of mist gathered from the waterfall on the soles of her feet. Pulling the side of her long black skirt away, she exposed her pale legs to the dewy air as she climbed the rocks before her, slowly yet with comfortable ease._

 _Finding her way to the top, the female perched on a damp rock and looked out upon a most beautiful horizon. The waterfall, over two hundred feet tall, roared behind her, sending splashes of crystal clear water to spray majestically in and around a most vibrant rainbow, caused by the sunshine and damp. The female drank eagerly in the far off sight of her world, watching the three suns on their slow rotations around the planet. Her long, pink hair snapped and rippled in the wind like a waving flag, her bangs tousled and damp on her dew-drop covered face. Her expression was one of perfect serenity, at oneness with her surroundings._

 _That was, until a voice, carried by the wind, fell on her ears and caused her to stiffen. Her facial expression carefully eased into a mask, eyes placid, mouth calm and emotionless._

 _Another female was climbing the small hill, working, with slight difficulty, to catch up to the other. Her teal-blue pigtails also whipped about her in the wind, twisting and twirling, like ribbons, a bright, pink-lipped smile on her face._

 _The pink-haired woman noted, with some sense of disdain, that the much younger, other girl was in fact quite beautiful._

 _"Cupidinis!" The pig-tailed girl called happily, waving up at the other._

 _The rosy-haired maiden, Cupidinis, smiled sweetly and waved back, sighing under her breath. As the other girl approached, she reached out and offered her a hand, helping her up and over a particularly large rock. As she was lifted up, she stumbled, and with a short cry, fell forward into Cupidinis' waiting arms. As teal and pink hair whipped and twirled about them, Cupidinis did not let go, but held the other girl closer, placing a hand on the back of her head._

 _"Steady, Aequo."_

 _Aequo, as the teal-haired female was called, turned bright pink in her cheeks. She slowly circled her arms around the other female and rested her burning cheek against Cupidinis' chest. Her entire body burned up with flutters as she felt a kiss touch the top of her head._

 _"Are you happy?" Aequo asked eagerly, unafraid or ashamed to show her own happiness in the excited way in which she asked._

 _Cupidinis was silent. She detested lying, but detested her current predicament more. Knowing how the other girl felt, how could she encourage her?_

 _"It is a great honor to be pledged to you,_ principissa _."_

 _It wasn't a lie._

 _Aequo, so blinded by love, missed the cool undertones in the other girls' voice. Still very young in age, she dreamed of many fantastical things, and_ magnetizing _to Cupidinis, passion herself, was a dream many had but none had yet fulfilled._

 _"The Imperator will set the date soon. Your father has already been invited to the capital." Aequo could barely breathe in her excitement. She turned her face skyward, hoping for a kiss, disappointed when Cupidinis pulled away from her._

 _"I will be sure to greet him, then." She uttered calmly, stroking the top of Aequo's head before turning around to gaze at the waterfall._

 _Moments of silence passed while Cupidinis hoped against all hope that the younger girl would go away to leave her in peace. She could do nothing about the_ Magnet _arrangement, at least she hadn't come up with anything yet, but she could live out her free days in peace before she was sold to the princess, and therefore the royal family, of their world. Her soulful blue eyes sought something in the blur of the falls, something peaceful or calming, but all she could see was a teeming surface that matched the storm of her inner emotion. It was heart-wrenching, because the waterfall had always been her favorite place to frequent._

 _"Why do you treat me as a child?" Aequo sung, and Cupidinis felt a hand brush against her elbow. The dulcet notes of Aequo's young, high pitched voice enveloped her, and color burst within the waterfall, deep twisting notes of teal and pink swirling together. Droplets sparked like drops of fire, showering the air around them like fireworks._

 _Cupidinis neglected to focus on the words after that, but turned and embraced her betrothed, however unwillingly, to fulfill her duty. If Aequo would be willing to use her song magic against her, Cupidinis could not withstand._

-x-

 _Notes swelled out of her throat and burst like fire within the clouds. Sparks rained from the heavens and color swirled around her, burning like the tails of stars. Below her, in the canyon, was a scene of carnage like to none she had ever before witnessed. Her father's enemies, those that would have him murdered in his frail age and remove him from his place of power, were mad with a lust for blood, and ruined one another in a sea of crimson violence. Brother murdered brother, father murdered son, daughter murdered father, and the circle continued._

 _Cupidinis, from her safe perch upon the cliff side, belted out her song of anger, of rage, controlling their weak and unintelligent minds. The more heart and soul she poured into her song, the more blood was shed. Limbs were torn completely from the body, eyes ripped out, hearts torn from a chest beating and bloody. The notes of anguish and rage filled the air, and the army sang along with her as she, their blood goddess, lifted and levitated closer toward the passionate fray._

 _Controlled by her will, filled with her song and her desire, the army desired as she desired, and so filled with the passionate lust for power, they turned on one another, until every last soldier was gone._

 _At the end, throat raw and hoarse and bloody from the power of her song, eyes burning with rage and loathing, Cupidinis walked among the bodies, the hem of her long, slitted skirt dragging in the sea of blood, her gold boots splattered with the thick substance. Lowering herself to her knees, she dipped her fingers in the pools and streaked them down her cheeks, leaving dark trails of blood to run down her cheeks as she turned her face up to the sky and let loose a screaming roar of anguish and bitter rage._

 _When that roar was done, she could no longer sing. She could no longer communicate. Every sound she made was a breathing whisper, no more than a breeze of wind in the spring._

 _When they learned of what she had done, all feared her when before she had been desired._

 _All departed from her very presence._

 _All looked upon her in awe as a fearsome creature to beware._

 _All but the King, who knew she had to be controlled._

 _So he betrothed her to his daughter._

-x-

The Yuzuki home was silent on a glittering, blissful morning. Song birds flittered to and from bushes and trees, flapping their wings and tweeting out their gleeful chittering, carrying on conversations unknown to sentient beings. Not a single board creaked on the home, not a single paper shingle shuddered in a breeze, not a single musical note echoed from an opened window, as had been the habit of the house not too long ago when a certain lavender-haired girl inhabited the place.

All was still. All was lovely, pure, and perfect.

Until a sudden scream ripped from within the house, startling the birds, who flapped their frantic wings and burst from their branches, desperate to get away. The brave ones plopped onto the grass not too far away and hopped back in the direction of the house, wondering if the strange and unexpected sound would happen again, and if there were any dangers connected to it.

Within the confines of the house, a rosy-haired individual was stirring from a fitful sleep. Her shaking hands were pressed over her shadowed eyes, her form stooped low in a collapsed crouch on the floor. Her long, floral-pink hair cascaded gracefully down her back and draped across the wooden floorboards, rippling on the hunched up wrinkles of a slitted black skirt that lay in pooled bunches by her feet.

The female, shaking head to toe, wiped her forehead free of the damp sheen that had taken place there, fingering her head to feel if the headphones were still in place. They were, and somehow seemed more firmly connected and in almost permanent place. The pain in her brain had receded from skull-splitting to generic headache, something much more manageable. But her eyes could still see the blood covering her hands, and so they shook as she straightened herself up on the floor.

Her memories hadn't **all** come back to her. But enough had. It was the strangest sensation to her, Luka (though that was clearly not her real name), to feel like she was two completely different people in one body. An unfamiliar past had just been revealed to her, one that did not match up with the past eight years that she could remember. How was she supposed to reconcile the carnal beast she was, walking through that field of death, with the happy, spunky, adorable pop-diva that she'd become on this planet?

 _This planet…_ Luka thought, her head spinning as she experienced an intense sense of vertigo. Only that morning she'd believed the only life-giving planet in existence was "this planet"- earth. Not even a few hours later, and she knew that she originated from another. Its name, at the moment, was unknown to her, and no matter how hard she tried, it would not come to her.

Luka sat up fully as slowly as possible, resting her hands on the low table before her. She scooted closer to it so she could prop her body up against its' sturdy wood, to support herself, and hung her face in her hands. A light blue glow lit the morning dark of the room around her, from the bell-shaped sleeve on her forearm and the round disks in the sides of her headphones. It both soothed and creeped her out simultaneously, which creeped her out even more.

"Okay, Luka." She whispered desperately to herself. "Just think."

Enough of her memories had come back to her to know. Luka, or Cupidinis (she didn't want to accept that name quite yet), had come from another planet, as bizarre as that seemed. She couldn't quite remember why. But apparently, according to that violent memory dream that had awoken her, her voice and song had power over people. Her stomach rolled as she remembered the violent way in which the soldiers tore one another apart, all a product of her singing. The evening of the fateful concert popped into her mind, as well, reminding her of the violent way the audience turned. But that time had been different. Her fans had appeared crazy, for sure, but it wasn't quite violence on their features. She remembered some of the things they shouted: "she's mine", and "I love you".

Shaking her head, Luka moved on to another slightly disturbing topic. That girl, Miku (or Aequo), appeared in her thoughts as swirls of teal-green hair and sweet smiles. Luka could not equate the girl of her dreams with the girl she'd met before. She couldn't remember having seen Miku smile, not once, since she'd met her in this life, on this planet. But in her dreaming memories, she'd been the happiest young girl.

They'd been betrothed. Luka wasn't sure how to think about that, except that she knew she hadn't been happy about it back then. She was a little disturbed by it now. She'd never thought of herself as liking females, and never had that inclination before. If someone had told her, as only Megurine Luka and not Cupidinis, that she had been about to "marry" a girl before, she would have adamantly refused. But now, she could see, or almost realize, why that might have been a thing…

Regardless, Luka knew she hadn't wanted it. But the odd thing was, she couldn't quite remember if they'd gone through with it or not. Had she and Miku actually "magnetized", as they had called it? She couldn't even quite remember what "magnetizing" was, though she had some idea. It was similar to earthly marriage, but much more permanent, a sort of bonding mechanism that had a chemical impact on the body's behavior and life-cycle.

Luka cleared her throat to relieve an itch, the organic tube in her chest feeling raw as if she'd really been singing the death of a thousand soldiers instead of just remembering that she had done it. She knew it was merely dehydration and that she needed a glass of water, but it was hard to convince herself when the dream memory had seemed so very real.

Pushing herself shakily to her feet, she wobbled on the heels of her sparkling gold boots. She wondered why this outfit was always the outfit she wore when the headphones were on. In her memories she'd almost always been wearing it that she could think of. Perhaps it was a uniform of sorts.

Walking unsteadily into the kitchen, she fetched a glass and poured herself a glass of water, tipping it up and into her mouth. In five long gulps she'd downed it, then poured herself another, taking a little longer with this one but still managing to finish it off quickly. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she set the glass down on the counter top, comforted by the normalcy of the sound of the glass clinking against the tile.

Why had she come to this planet? Why had Miku?

Luka tried to remember this. To her, it seemed the most important puzzle piece to all of this. Even so, the more she tried to remember, the more it slipped away from her. It was as if someone had taken an enormous eraser to the side of her brain, and wiped half of her memory archives away in one smooth swipe. The more she searched, the less she found. Funny enough, she could feel the headphones working, their mini computers fully synched now with her brain and operating on all cylinders, trying to find the information she sought for her. It was a bizarre realization to say to herself that she could feel them, as they were inanimate objects.

A little plate made of clay resting on the window sill above the sink caught Luka's eye. She traced one finger, her nails a glowing neon blue casting odd shadows on the side of the plate, along the edge, then scooped it up. "I love you, dad!" It read in messy childlike handwriting. Luka felt the bottom of her stomach fall out.

She didn't remember Yukari, not before this planet, not at all. However, Luka knew Yukari must have come with her and Miku, and however many others there were. Teruo had kidnapped her sister, therefore there was something unique about her, too. Besides, her singing voice was like an angel… Of course. Yukari was… whatever Luka was, too.

But how many more were there?

Her mind reeling, Luka rested the plate back down on the sill and moved back through the rest of the house, swaying like a wraith as she walked. She slipped into her old room and threw open the closet doors, intending to find something else to wear. Her eyes landed on a simple black dress, but as she reached for it, she felt the brush of fabric against her knee, and a light breeze around her ankles. Blinking in surprise, she looked down to find that her bizarre, gold and black outfit had changed, and she now wore an exact replica of that little black dress. Her boots were gone, and instead she stood in her bare feet.

Her hands flew to those headphones, panicking that they may have disappeared, but she was comforted to find that they were still there. The blue glow had dissipated, however, and her nails were now a normal color. An idea occurred to her, and Luka bit her lip, thinking momentarily about it just as she had with her dress. Her fingertips shifted as the headphones beneath them began to morph shape. Eagerly, she whipped around and skipped to the closest mirror, staring in awe and disbelief at the image before herself. The headphones had completely and totally changed their shape, and now resembled a simple black headband, incognito adornment on the top of her head, yet still connected.

Luka didn't have to take them off. She felt tremendously relieved to realize this, or perhaps Cupidinis did. Luka wasn't quite sure how to feel just yet.

Even though she knew much more about herself now, and even though that self she had learned seemed more stranger than friend, there were still many more answers to find. The first task, she knew, was to approach her ex-boyfriend and get her sister back. Perhaps she could do something about Miku in the process, as well. It wouldn't hurt to try.

Something told Luka, however, that now she had her headphones and her identity, all of this was going to be a piece of cake for her. She wasn't worried at all, not really, not deep, deep, down. It was human to worry. She was better than human. And it was time she started to be more like herself.

-x-

Todd Bulinsky awoke in the hospital to Teruo Kurosawa staring at him from a chair at the side of his bed. The first word out of Todd Bulinsky's mouth was a very naughty word, beginning with an 'f' and ending with a very firmly pronounced 'you'. Teruo Kurosawa merely smiled; there was genuine mirth in it.

"You were out a long time. I'm glad you're awake."

"You told me they were destroyed! How the f-," Todd broke off with a cough, reaching for his throat as his eyes bugged out of his head.

"Careful, old friend. That man crushed your larynx. You're still recovering." Teruo uttered soothingly, standing and leaning over the bed to offer a cool glass of water to the much older man laying there.

He took it, glaring suspiciously at Teruo while spluttering little coughs, and sipped some of the cool liquid down noisily, sighing in pleasure at the feel of it on his burning throat.

Seconds of silence passed amicably between them. Teruo straightened his very expensive, heavy metal watch, then pulled the cuff of his shirt down to cover it again, crossing his legs at the ankles.

"You know her. She must have hidden them, the little minx." Teruo offered when Todd had regained his composure. A far-away look came to his eye as if he was recalling something, something that brought a fond smirk to his lips. "I remember when I first met her. I was only fourteen, but I wanted her so badly. She knew it and used it against me. Father was very cross."

"But you were supposed to protect her." Todd accused, his eyes looking dangerously close to bugging out again. His face was turning from red to purple to white. He clearly was still having trouble breathing.

Teruo had the decency to look guilty. He nodded, then lowered his head and picked at a loose thread in the seam of his pants. It refused to come away, which annoyed him.

"Yes, I know." He began quietly, tugging harder on the rebellious string. "She's too much for me, though. I thought-,"

"… yes?" Todd prompted impatiently, unwilling to put up with Teruo's feelings when he felt like crap.

"I thought I could tame her. I thought I could be enough for her."

"That's why you're stupid."

"Clearly," Teruo uttered quietly, finally succeeding in freeing the damned string but feeling no satisfaction. "Which is why I changed my mind. She doesn't belong in this world."

Todd thought about that last statement, then shook his head. "You're wrong."

"You only say that because she made you money."

Todd, scoundrel as he was, knew he couldn't refute that. So he lay unspeaking in the hospital bed, wheezing quietly. Teruo waited a long while, then slowly stood, clapping his hands together once.

"Well, anyway. It's a different ball-game now. Father wants her back. You're going to help us."

The pop-diva's manager looked conspicuous at this, and shook his head slowly from side to side. "If he wants her, he can just go get her."

Teruo chuckled merrily, rubbing a hand through his hair, the only gesture he'd given that told Todd that the man was truly tired of all of this.

"This is our girl you're talking about. She's smart, and quick on her feet. She got the media involved, and we have to make careful moves. Which is where you come in-,"

"Because I'm her manager." Todd nodded, rolling his eyes completely to the back of his skull and back, taking another sip from the glass of water. "You're a dick, Teruo."

"Thank you."

"You're not welcome."

The door clicked gently behind Teruo Kurosawa as he left the room without another word. Both men had tired of the conversation and pretending to be comfortable with the concepts presented in that conversation. Todd Bulinsky, especially, felt like a sand castle he'd spent years trying to build and protect from the tide was about to be engulfed by a tsunami. Despite seeing her in only dollar signs and no further value or worth, Todd Bulinsky, manager of pop-idol Megurine Luka, had truly grown fond of her. Who else was out there to look out for her now? As far as he saw it, she needed him.

"Teruo can go f- himself."


	9. Chapter 9

So, I have to apologize for my lack of posting on this story. I have to be honest and admit that I hit a creative writers block. I actually wrote this chapter three times over a few months, and I'm still not happy with it. But I decided it was better to commit to this one and keep the story going. If I can get out of this awkward plot phase, then I can get on to the good stuff, and I know that my readers are really looking forward to the good stuff. I promise that some action is coming, so hang in there. Again, I apologize, I am not worthy, but I promise that, even if it takes me forever, I will be finishing this story all the way through to the end. Thank you to those of you who decide to give this story a second chance and read it. I truly treasure you as readers. 3

* * *

Chapter 9: You Are Our Only Hope

The sound of a heart monitor beeped slowly and steadily, echoing in the cold, steely, surgically white hospital room. Blinding light warred with the blinds hanging limp in the windows, piercing though every hole and crevice they left unattended to blaze upon whatever the light could touch. A figure lay still on a hospital bed, propped up just slightly, his feet and torso appearing as a mummy in a shroud. Teruo Kurosawa, handsome yet appearing exhausted in his tired features, slumped in a bedside chair, his blood shot gaze fixed on his father's face.

Kazuko Kurosawa slept deeply in his bed, head tilted back, mouth gaping open to catch flies against his pillow. A slight string of drool had begun to dribble down his chin. His hands folded over one another on the sheets, knuckles knobby and old, veins pulsating and thick over his bones, liver spots tainting the faint parchment color of his skin. His fingernails were cut short and stubby, and hair grew gray and stringy over the backs of his hands and up his arms, matching the look of the salt and pepper hair that resided on the top of his head.

Teruo Kurosawa could not stand the sight of the man before him. In his eyes, his father had always been powerful and strong, not a weakling confined to a hospital bed. But for the past year and a half, Kazuko Kurosawa, one of the wealthiest and most generous men in Japan, had been hospitalized due to illness, and it seemed unlikely he would soon be set free. He wasn't so ill in the mind that he couldn't run his hospitals anymore, but he lacked the mobility necessary to take part in all of the programs Kazuko had started in his lifetime as a health company mogul. His son, Teruo, had become his legs, eyes, ears, and hands in the company. Kazuko was still the brain.

It was this concept that Teruo was exploring with his own brain in the early morning hours as he awaited his father to wake and give him his marching orders for the day. He loved his father, surely, however he couldn't help but wonder what it would be like when the companies his father owned were finally his, when he could make his decisions, when he had control over the experiments run in the Vocaloid project.

His thoughts were interrupted by the small 'ping' his cell phone made when he received a text message. Pulling up the phone, he swiped his thumb print to unlock the screen and examined the text briefly.

SMS: Megurine Luka back in Tokyo. Roppongi Grand Tower- top floor.

Teruo pushed himself up in his seat, then shifted and rearranged himself as he stared at the text on his screen. He hadn't bothered to name the number he'd received the text from; he'd wanted to be as discreet as possible when he'd hired someone to tail his ex-girlfriend. Moving back to Tokyo was a bold move for her, but moving into that part of the city was proof that she intended to stay in the limelight as a 'pop princess'. He'd have to be careful as they proceeded. Teruo still wasn't sure he intended any harm toward Luka, but now that she had her headphones, they had to assume she had some of her memories. He wasn't sure who she'd side with.

He figured who she'd side with when he thought about how his father had ordered him to take Yukari back into custody when they'd discovered her location.

Crossing one leg over the other, he dialed up the phone number that had just texted him, staring at his father's disgusting sleep face. As the phone dialed, his father snorted and shifted in the bed, then lay still once more. Teruo rolled his eyes.

"Hey. My associate hasn't woken yet, so there's no move today. Back off her, but keep your eyes on the target. We'll move soon."

Tapping the "end call" button on the phone, Teruo pondered the lack of satisfaction a customer had with modern phones. At least with a flip phone in the past, snapping it shut had a sense of finality to it. How fitting to the mood of this game he was playing that would have been.

-x-

Len wondered, if he were made entirely of organic tissue, if he'd be shivering right now. Instead, he stood still as a statue as the elevator flew up many, many floors. He wondered if his palms would be sweating, or if his skin would be clammy, if he'd feel a nauseous turn in his stomach. What he was about to do was quite dangerous. He wasn't necessarily disobeying a direct order, but hacking into your masters' phone with your brain and robotic computer skills wasn't typically lauded as dutiful behavior. Nor was using the information you found in that phone to have a conversation with an individual your master was having watched, a conversation your master would not want this certain individual to hear or be a part of.

Every single one of Len's loyalty enhancers would have been firing off by now, if he hadn't of jammed them before he left the facility beneath the hospital. His body would have been out of his control, and marched him back into the hospital. Or it would have contacted his master via live camera feed and shown his master exactly what he was doing. As it was, Len would have to be quite careful to erase all of the footage from this meeting once he got back to the facility. First, if he had time, he'd show Miku what had transpired. Then, it would be gone forever, as if it had never happened. The only memory that would remain would be the one in his brain, the only piece of organic tissue that couldn't be accessed or tampered with by his master.

The elevator doors swung wide open with a slow, unenthusiastic 'ding' that announced he'd reached his desired floor. Len Kagamine looked out upon the entire city of Tokyo, as it seemed, from the top floor of the Roppongi Grand Tower. He stepped carefully out of the elevator and toward the large window, pressing his hands along the sill and leaning forward to press his forehead against the glass. Despite his lack of typical feeling, he could almost swear he felt peace, the most he ever had, looking down upon the city from that position.

Tearing his eyes away from the view, he turned his back on the window to increase his focus, and closed his eyes. Standing stock still, Len used his wireless outreach to tap into the buildings various internet systems. Shifting through various net usage such as Netflix binge-watchers, home office workers, and other, more nefarious online uses, Len searched for specific search criteria that might lead him to the woman he sought: Megurine Luka. He wasn't sure what she would use her home internet for, or even if it'd been set up yet, but he computed an algorithm of most likely sites and search terms she would use, and passed the various terms through all sources within the top floor of the apartment building.

As he'd hoped, it wasn't too hard to narrow in on her. The top floor, being the most luxurious, only housed fifteen different suites. Fourteen of those suites were not like the other. One of those suites had recently been researching everything they could possibly want to know about the Kurosawa family and their companies. Len frowned to himself, worrying for her safety and her unbeknownst ignorance at what her search could turn up. If he found her that easily, he knew his Master was probably a few steps ahead of him in locating her as well.

Striding around the top hallway and passing a few doors, he came to the opposite side of the building and stood before number 1365 B. There was a keypad on the door that would buzz from the inside if she wanted to speak to him instead of opening the door right away. It was also the key to get inside. Len knew, just by glancing at the keypad, what her entrance number was, and he beeped it in without a second thought. They hadn't met before, and he didn't want to give her a chance to deny him entry. Better to terrify her by walking in and make amends than set her to suspicion.

The keypad jingled a cheerful tune, agreeing to allow Len past it's barrier. He turned the chrome handle of the wooden door and pushed his way inside, gently and quietly closing it behind himself, slipping off his shoes and laying them aside to respect the Japanese custom. The apartment within was eerily silent, a mood combating with the cheerful sunshine burning in from every window in the main living area. The walls were basically the windows themselves, with sheer white curtains hanging from ceiling to floor, allowing light in but giving the feeling of privacy, despite the fact that privacy was not needed when you lived at a height above all others in a bustling city like Tokyo.

Len poked his head around the corner of the hallway into the modern, clean design of the living room. The furniture was clean looking and white, new and unused. While the fixtures and adornments of the furniture were homey, the colors reminded him of the hospital. He hated the design and noted that if he lived here, he would have needed to add some color.

Luka was nowhere to be seen. Convinced she was not present, at least in that room, Len strode forward into the middle of the room to peer down the short hallway. At the end of that hallway was a bedroom decorated in gray and blue, and to the left the kitchen opened up into the main living space. Behind him was a smaller bedroom in lavender and cream, and a few other doors in another hall he could only guess led to an office, bathroom, or closet. He was just deciding where he should best wait to present himself to Luka when she came home later when she stepped out of one of those doors and started down the hallway, her eyes on her cell phone screen.

Len did not have the normal reaction any typical human would have upon realizing someone was about to find them in a place they were not supposed to be. He did not dive behind the white sofa. He stood completely still where he was, his eyes wide and piercing on the pink-haired woman walking toward him.

Luka, however, had quite a human reaction, and threw her phone in the air after jumping and shouting lightly in surprise. The phone slammed into the wall, tumbled to the floor, then spun across said floor until it ran into the leg of a chair in the dining area and bounced away, unharmed but lonely. Her hands came up to protect herself and she backed up into the wall the phone had hit, fumbling for the corner to guide herself back as quickly as need be.

"Who are you? Th-This is my home. What are you doing in here?"

Len just blinked at her, as if in awe, then slowly sank down into a seat on the sofa. He raised a hand and gestured for her to come closer.

"I apologize for scaring you. Please, sit down. I will leave as soon as we have spoken."

Luka did not move any closer, but she did freeze, instead of floundering for a way out. She studied the male before her, surprised to find that he appeared quite young, maybe thirteen or fourteen. Despite his age, he was quite handsome, like someone had found a new talent and turned him into a pop star before he'd even hit puberty. He gave off an airbrushed quality, yet he was a living entity and not a picture on the page of a magazine.

"I asked who you are. Why are you here? Answer my questions before I call security."

"Oh, right." Len nodded, his small yellow ponytail bobbing up and down. "My name is Kagamine Len. I am part of the Vocaloid Project your friend Teruo Kurosawa has recently taken over. I was sent here by the girl you call Hatsune Miku. I have important information to impart to you."

Luka hesitated, her thoughts in a whirl. "Did Miku actually send you? How do I know you aren't here for Teruo?"

"Teruo does not want to hurt you. His father wants to hurt you, but his father is ill and has no power except the power he has over his son." Len spoke candidly without facial emotion, throwing in a light shrug at an attempt to seem human. "You are being followed, but no move will be made as long as Teruo has control over the company and you stay in the public eye."

Luka didn't know how to reply to all of this information, but she didn't have to. Len had closed his eyes and held out a hand toward her as if she should be silent. He waited for a good twenty-something seconds before opening his eyes and smiling lightly.

"There were exactly three articles published about you out of the past three hundred and fifty-two articles posted so far this week concerning celebrities and popular media. You need to get back to work, before people forget you and you vanish from public sight. It will become more dangerous for you, if you do not."

"How did you remember all of that?"

"I am an android, with a fully functional, organic brain. I didn't remember it. I accessed it from the internet. I can do a lot of things."

"Okay." She wasn't sure how to process that information. Instead, she asked a question. "Why did Miku send you?"

"Well, firstly, because I wanted to meet you." The smile vanished from his face, leaving him eerily emotionless again. But his eyes seemed to gain a fiery intensity as he looked at her, making Luka feel as if he was doing a whole lot more than just 'looking'. "I've always wanted to meet you, even if most people were afraid to."

The popstar was put off guard with this statement, but the recent dream she had of herself singing over a gory, glorified battlefield came to mind. A chill ran down her spine. She could tell by the way he said the word "afraid" that he didn't mean intimidated by celeb status. She could see it in his android eyes.

Shuddering slightly, and hugging her arms around herself to hide the gesture as feeling suddenly chilly, she stepped forward and joined him in the seating area, sinking onto the opposite sofa and folding her arms in her lap.

"Do you mean… before? In my past life?"

"It wasn't a past life, Ms. Luka. It is your current life. You are who you are."

"Okay." Luka bit her lip and frowned at the carpet, running a hand along the gooseflesh on her arms to attempt to calm it. "So, now you've met me. What's the second reason?"

Len, still sitting ramrod straight on the sofa, suddenly rose with a grace that was impossible for even the best dancer to accomplish. He strode toward the television set against the wall and plugged his finger into one of the HDMI ports. What happened next Luka didn't even begin to know how to explain. The television came on, and images flooded the screen, images of places and people. She recognized monuments from all over the world, all flickering past as if mere thoughts of one another, and saw glimpses of people, all different sizes and shapes with hair colored like rainbows. One girl in particular flickered by numerous times, petite with bright yellow hair just like his, the same shocking blue eyes. Luka wondered who she was, but Len turned to look at her, his eyes glowing a bright, neon blue.

"You need to help us free those in the Vocaloid project."

As he said this, an image of one of Teruo's most successful hospitals in downtown Tokyo flickered onto the screen and remained. She watched the screen as it narrowed in, a lot like a camera but not quite as smooth, and she was taken on a virtual tour of the hospital.

"Down the main hall, take elevator 3, passcode "56248eva", floor "BASE". That's where the Vocaloid are kept."

As Len narrated, he actually showed her from what Luka was beginning to realize was his memory. He walked her down the main hall, into the elevator, punched in the passcode, and rode down to floor BASE, all of it appearing on the television. The technological level of this was astounding.

"Is my sister there? Is that where he has her?"

Len nodded, and the image flickered, replaced by an image of a solid iron door with a small window at the top. The screen narrowed in to peer into the window and there, curled up on a small cot, was Yukari Yuzuki.

"Oh my…" Luka's breath caught in her throat and she rushed to the television, forgetting herself for a moment. "She's there… Yukari."

"She is safe, for now. They have yet to mess with her head."

"What do you mean, mess with her head?!"

"I apologize." Len bowed his head low. "Perhaps I should have phrased that differently, but if you are to succeed, you must remain calm."

Luka felt a momentary rush of rage and, surprised that it had come out of her, quelled it quickly, backing away to fall onto the arm of the sofa, her hands on her knees and head hanging.

"I-… I can't do this. I can't." Raising her head, she stared at Yukari's frozen image on the screen, her eyes softly sad. "I'd be recognized the moment I walked in."

Len was quiet for a long time. Somberly he pulled his finger from the HDMI port and the tv flickered off. Rubbing his wrist, a surprisingly fidgety sort of behavior, he approached her almost timidly, and placed his robotic hand on her shoulder.

"I've seen you do many great things. You cannot remember now, but you are not human. Your true self is suppressed. You, as you are now, are… debilitated compared to who you were. Discover yourself, and all will be well."

Luka stood, shrugging his hand from her shoulder, and moved toward the door, irritated at his statement. She didn't want to be whoever she was before. She wanted to be herself, the self that she already knew. She wanted to sing, make people happy, and live in Japan. She wanted her life back.

"Well… we'll see. I'm not sure what I can do, but I'll think about it." She gestured toward the door. "I think it's time that you leave."

Len stood there, emotionless eyes gazing at her. When he moved, it was like a statue coming to life. He walked toward the door, a slight frown on his lips.

"One more thing. If you free the Vocaloid, do not forget the headphones. They're hidden, somewhere in the hospital. We'll never get home without them."

'Get home?' Luka thought despairingly. She remembered that planet, that gorgeous planet from her dreams, or memories, whatever they were, and felt a soft longing in her heart. But that longing warred with her current self, and simultaneously she felt violently sick to her stomach.

"That sounds nice. Now, please tell Miku what I said, and have a lovely afternoon."

Len was politely kicked out at that moment. The door jingled its cheerful charm as it opened and roughly closed behind him. He stood still in the doorway a moment, feeling oddly useless and pointless, like his entire decision to come to this place today had been for nothing. Yet still, he had tried, and that was all that mattered. It was time to get back to the hospital, before his master discovered the very naughty thing that he had done.

-x-

"It's nice to see you again, Yukari."

Yukari didn't recognize the doctor before her. She frowned and squirmed in her restraints, wrists twisting in the leather cuffs that kept her bound to the hospital bed. Studying his wrinkled, old face and bald head, she decidedly reached a conclusion that he was terrifyingly gross and would not be doing anything pleasant to her. A whimper left her lips and she kicked uselessly at the restraints on her ankles.

"It's been a while since you connected. When we're done here today, you will have a splitting migraine. But we'll let you sleep all day tomorrow, so don't worry. I'll also give you some great pain-relievers. I can't promise you won't feel a thing, but it'll all be okay."

As the doctor spoke, he readied some instruments that didn't look too friendly, and bustled around her. Every time he went out of eyesight, Yukari stiffened and her hearing increased, terrified he'd approach from behind and try something. She wasn't the kind of person to do futile things, so she didn't beg or protest. She knew it wouldn't help. Instead, her brain actively tried to think of what was about to happen to her. The ideas were terrifying, causing her throat to swell up and her mouth to feel like it was made of cotton. Her palms were sweaty and clammy, and her toes were cold.

"Okay. Here we go."

The doctor's voice was heard from the right side. He approached her with a small item in his hand that looked like a Bluetooth speaker headset. Two metal prongs glimmered in the hospital lighting, and she whined in terror as he ordered two nurses to secure her head. Eyes wide and doe-like, she tried to see what he would be doing with the object, and felt those two metal prongs slide easily into place behind her ear. Blinking in confusion, she tried to reason why that would be when the entire world dropped out from beneath her, and she fainted into a suddenly drowsy state.

The last thing she could remember seeing was an angel descending upon her, his strong arms reaching for her, his long hair draping around her, before she passed out into blackness.


End file.
